A classically-trained copywriter – and there are some still left, believe me – knows that three is a compelling number. Telling someone they’ll get ‘everything from green to blue’ is OK. But telling them they’ll get everything from ‘green, through red, to blue’ is much better. Telling them ‘dishes sparkle, plates shine’ makes it sound like an OK dishwasher. Promising them that ‘dishes sparkle, plates shine and cutlery gleams’ is a much bigger, more exciting promise. Three has been the balance-tipping number, the number of certainty, since at least the night of the Last Supper.
Maybe the classically-trained copywriters, most of them now moved on from the shallow pools of commerce, have taken their talents to the murky puddles of political speech-writing. Because you can hear the smithing of their kind of words on the dead anvils of falsehood, on a daily basis.
The more inexplicable the politician’s decision, the more it is touted as good news. The decision to bomb middle eastern tribesmen into extinction will almost certainly be described as ‘good news for freedom and democracy’.
A decision to pay a scrappage allowance on old cars will be announced as ‘good news for the car industry, and good news for the recycling industry’. It is, of course, terrible news for the environment, and anyone who’s just paid full price for a new car. But two good news counts makes the news good and right.
An increase in prescription charges could well be identified as ‘good news for pharmacists, good news for the health service, and good news for patients.’ Anyone who has trouble working out why more expensive medication is good news for ill people should stop and think. The government says so, so it must be true, silly. The government said it three times, so it must be unassailably true, good and right.
But good news has a way of speaking for itself. The classically trained copywriter knows that ‘Free!’ is the most powerful word in advertising. No need to add ‘This is really good news’.
‘New!’ is the second most powerful word in advertising, and adding ‘Good!’ doesn’t make it any better or stronger.
You’re right. We should smell a rat, any time anyone rushes up with news they describe as ‘good'. The word ‘good’ in such a context nearly always means ‘bad’.
‘It’s good for the taxpayer, it’s good for business, and it’s good for the country.’ Of course it isn’t. If it was that good, it’d be self-evidently good. Protesting too much is a dead giveaway.
‘This is good news for children, good news for parents, and good news for the food labelling industry’ simply means ‘we’re spending huge amounts of taxpayers’ money on an exercise nobody can actually justify or understand.’
As I write this, I am congratulated by coincidence. Today, Cadbury, one of Britain’s last, best and most dignified names, has just been acquired, against its will, by the lumpen greedy American coagulate (and I mean that) Kraft. And the evening radio news has just this moment reported that our Minister for Trade and Industry, or something like that, Lord Mandelson, has described this terrible loss of one of the last jewels in the crown, this kicking-and-screaming kidnap-for-cash as ‘good news for British manufacturing.’
Good news? Go figure.
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