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Okay, boys and girls. Here's tonight's free history lesson on the granddaddy of modern marketing. (It's not exactly a coincidence that he's related to Freud. ) But first, a word from our sponsors:

1. You're all sheep, with your own worth being sold to you in print, sound, and images.
2. No, all marketers aren't evil. (Editor's note: Just the good ones.)

Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, died in 1998 at the age of 105. He was the founding father of modern advertising. During World War I, Bernays was hired by President Woodrow Wilson to participate in the Creel Commission, the mission of which was to sway popular opinion in favor of entering the war, on the side of Britain. The war propaganda campaign of Bernays produced such an intense anti-German hysteria as to permanently impress American business with the potential of large-scale propaganda to control public opinion.

In 1928, Edward Bernays wrote:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. Hollywood and the Pentagon have a long history of making movies together.

Here's a link to an article, The Incorporation of Dreams: Freud's Machiavellian public relations relation and how he sold the world on capitalism, in which Dennis Lim wrote:

The Century of the Self, an engrossing quartet of hour-long films by British documentarian Adam Curtis, doesn't so much challenge Freud's theories of the unconscious as shadow them through the corridors of corporate and political power. What emerges is nothing less than a history of 20th-century social control. Installing Freud as unwitting godfather, Curtis fingers Edward Bernays, Freud's American nephew, as the Machiavellian mastermind who first thought to introduce psychoanalytic techniques into the sphere of big business. The true subject of Curtis's lucid, pessimistic film, it turns out, is the frightening adaptability of consumer capitalism.

Watch the film at Information Clearing House.

Now do your best to stop bleating and listen to Bill Hicks:

By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. Thank you, thank you. Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they'll take root. I don't know. You try. You do what you can. Kill yourselves. Seriously though, if you are, do. No really, there's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, OK? Kill yourselves, seriously. You're the ruiner of all things good. Seriously, no, this is not a joke. There's gonna be a joke coming ... There's no fucking joke coming, you are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage, you are fucked and you are fucking us, kill yourselves, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now. Now, back to the show.

Via Why Work?