OK, now I've seen it all!

Baker wrote an article on petty thieves, and sure enough, a respondent popped up blaming advertising on a perceived need that caused the person to commit theft.

All I can say is "wow!"

Now don't get me wrong; I own a TV (although we don't have cable), and I see the ads. But just as the recent tampon ads have not convinced me of the need to carry tampons along for temporary boat leakage repair, computer ads haven't convinced me of the need to own the biggest and best. In fact, we're still without internet connection in the home. Our TV is also a mere 19 inch TV (chosen because, in evaluating our electric usage to eventually convert our home for solar/wind power, we discovered that a 25 inch TV pulls twice the watts of a 19 inch model), and you will not find a single article of designer clothing in our home that was purchased at retail (the few articles we do have were given as gifts).

Advertising, you see, is not the devil. It cannot make me be what I am not, and has no power to force me to compromise my principles. The choices I make are mine and mine alone, and no advertising executive should be made to feel responsible, or even culpable, if I do something stupid, immoral, and/or illegal based on how I receive their advertising.

And if, by some stretch of the imagination, I find myself under the influence of advertising to the point where I can no longer make responsible decisions, I can turn my TV off. I can similarly set aside magazines and newspapers and refuse to even glance at their seductive layouts. As the Simpsons once famously said, "Just don't look!"