BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Last month when most anti-war Americans and their elected representatives were mostly keeping mum, a group called Artists United to Win Without War issued a strong statement to President Bush signed by a hundred celebrities including Kim Basinger, Carl Reiner and David Duchovny. That was followed this month by actors at rallies and actors in commercials like this one by Martin Sheen urging Americans to join this week's Virtual March on Washington.
MARTIN SHEEN: Don't invade Iraq. [FAINT DRUM BEAT UNDER] Inspections work. War won't. The Virtual March on Washington will allow every American opposed to the war to stand up and be counted by calling, faxing and e-mailing the U.S. Senate and the White House.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Rob Walker, writing this week in Slate, suggests that using front men and women like Sheen and Janeane Garofalo in ads may actually work against the anti-war movement. Rob, welcome to the show!
ROB WALKER: Hi! Thanks for having me.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Let's talk first about the Martin Sheen ad. Do you think it was effective?
ROB WALKER: No, I don't think it was particularly effective. I think it's getting a lot of this sort of attention in terms of people talking about the issue of whether or not celebrities are worthwhile figures on whether or not the United States should get involved in a war with Iraq, and so you have to kind of keep that in mind when you evaluate this ad; it isn't happening in a vacuum. We've been talking about this for weeks in one way or another. And--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So are you saying that the -- using the celebrity actor serves as a distraction perhaps from the real issue?
ROB WALKER:Well an interesting point of view on this was actually expressed not long ago by Janeane Garofalo in one of the other ads. She was talking to a reporter about why it is that celebrities so often seem to the be the people who are showing up on the nightly chat shows to take an anti-war line, and it was her point of view that-- celebrities are picked to do this because they in one way or another trivialize or de-fang the anti-war movement, and-- that's an interesting point of view. The curious thing about it is that if she and, and others presumably feel this way why they would think it would be effective for them to show up in the advertising that promotes that same point of view.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:I could see Janeane Garofalo or virtually anybody becoming an easy target for, say, Bill O'Reilly who's willing to attack families of the victims of 9/11 in his pursuit of the war. Janeane Garofalo has stated the view that the press is pretty much walking in lock step with the Bush administration -- but isn't it really a matter of numbers -- that you have the celebrity face in there and people are more likely to stay tuned?
ROB WALKER: I think that's probably a bigger factor than the idea that the media is in any way sort of conspiring to trivialize anybody's point of view on this. I think that when you book a talk show, a well known person is probably always going to be better than a, an unknown person.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:It was the contention in your column that using ads might actually have the effect of turning the public away from the message! Why do you think that the public isn't likely to be swayed by that kind of an ad?
ROB WALKER: Well one of the things you don't see so much of any more in just plain old non-political product-pushing advertising is exactly this kind of model where famous person A shows up, says well I eat cereal brand X and therefore you should eat cereal brand X. You, you really don't see that kind of advertising so much any more. People kind of stopped buying that line. They see it as being false and insincere. Obviously you still see celebrities in ads--but they're used in a more sophisticated way now.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So you're saying the sort of I'm-not-a-doctor-but-I-play-one-on-TV model has become something of a cliche?
BOB GARFIELD:Yeah, there's an interesting example of it that ran actually during the Super Bowl - an ad that got a lot of attention that featured Willie Nelson, and the premise of that ad was that Willie Nelson was considering whether or not he would do an advertisement endorsing shaving cream, which at first he dismissed as a ridiculous thing to do but then he ended up having to do it because he was in tax trouble, [LAUGHTER] so the ad really turned out to be an ad for H&R Block and the message being, well gee if, if only Willie Nelson had used us-- he wouldn't have to do something so crass and silly as-- pitching shaving cream. So, as you can see there, the idea of a celebrity looking at the camera and saying use this or do this - because I do it or I think it-- it's not something that people take seriously - in fact it's a punch line.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay! Thanks very much!
ROB WALKER: Sure!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rob Walker is a columnist for Slate.com. His most recent column is called The Ads of War.