Rhodes Less Traveled

I’ve wondered many times over the years whether Kathryn Simpson and I were speaking the same language, and Wednesday night’s South Kitsap School District meeting offers a case in point as to why.

Debating the question of whether to raise revenue by selling advertising space in the district’s buses, Simpson, who serves as president of the school board, opined that, “I think (advertising is) a bad idea in terms of student safety.”

Safety? Is she worried one of the placards will fall on someone’s head?

Dialing back Simpson’s hyperbole a few notches, I gather what she actually means is that it’s unhealthy for children to be exposed to advertising messages. But I have a number of reactions to that conclusion, none of which could be confused with agreement.

For starters, depending on which study one listens to and how one defines advertising, the average American is exposed to anywhere from 600 to 3,000 advertising messages a day, and youngsters tend to be on the upper end of that scale. I’m not suggesting it’s always a great thing, but at this point it does kind of seem as though that train has left the station.

Either advertising isn’t quite as harmful as Simpson fears or our kids are already too far gone to worry about, but one way or the other I can’t see how a few additional messages on the wall of their school bus will push them over the edge.

That’s particularly true since the district would obviously control who advertised and who didn’t. Just because advertising was allowed doesn’t mean the district would be compelled to festoon its buses with images of Joe Camel or satanic pentagrams.

Maybe it’s just me, but I actually think a billboard from the Washington Milk Council or Colgate Toothpaste would be better for kids than looking at an unadorned yellow bulkhead.

But Simpson wasn’t finished. She also made it known that she would be “very apprehensive about advertising on the inside of our buses from Corporate America.”

Again, huh? In my world, “Corporate America” is a euphemism for the private sector — you know, the folks who voluntarily invest capital to create a good or service the market will hopefully desire enough to trade its hard-earned dollars for. In the process, “Corporate America” generates the wealth and provides the jobs needed to fund the private sector — for example schools.

This is the horror we need to shield our kids from?

I’m not saying the program wouldn’t require a certain amount of oversight or that every conceivable ad would be appropriate for consideration. I’m just saying that in the version of English I speak, being asked to drink Ovaltine doesn’t put anyone’s safety at risk, and “Corporate America” is the place Mommy and Daddy go every morning to earn the paycheck that keeps a roof over our heads.