We're Drowning
In Fine Print
I don't say that just because I'm starting to reach the age where ALL print looks like fine print; I mean that "fine print" -- the legal mumbo-jumbo that tells you everything someone just said in the regular print is a big, fat lie -- has escaped the confines of record-club contracts and gym memberships and is insinuating itself into every facet of our lives.
It started taking over TV commercials years ago -- innocently enough, at first, just a little weasel word here and there, like "leaves dishes 'virtually' spotless!" or " 'practically' lifts stains right out!" If you found yourself scraping little dots of baked-on egg yolk off your plates after you took them out of the dishwasher -- well, hey, we just said "virtually" spotless, we never promised "immaculate!"
Then, advertisers began sticking little written disclaimers down at the bottom of the screen, just teentsy little phrases that were gone in the blink of an eye, something you never noticed unless you were looking for them. But they always seemed to be saying the exact opposite of what the commercial was claiming.
Toothpaste commercials made me the maddest. On the one hand, here's half a million dollars' worth of dazzling, computer-generated graphics showing germs and plaque being blasted into the next dimension, and a silken-voiced spokesman assuring me that Dazzle-Dent will keep my mouth as clean as the dawn of Creation.
Yet on the other hand, there's that annoying fine print, scrolling across the bottom of the screen, darkly whispering that Dazzle-Dent was "not effective against plaque below the gumline," then "not shown to affect gum disease," and finally admonishing, "always brush, floss, and see your dentist regularly."
Well, dadgummit, I want to say, what good are you, then?
I don't LIKE to go to the dentist. Don't go making me think if I brush with your product I never need lay eyes on another spit sink, then go and burst my balloon with an annoying little disclaimer 'way down at the bottom of the screen. Come up with something I can brush my teeth with that guarantees I never have to set foot within earshot of a dental drill again, ever, and we'll talk. Blasted fine print, ruin a perfectly good promise like that.
And then, occupying a whole universe of their own, are those new-car-lease commercials.
Just who are they kidding? Are we supposed to actually READ the two or three full screens of fine print that zip by so fast that Evelyn Wood herself would have to strike her colors? Or the speech-compression technology that lets them squish a good 10 minutes of spoken legalese into 10 seconds' air time?
And we're not talking some weasly little qualifier here, like "see your dentist," no, we're talking full-up, no-holds-barred, contract law -- ironclad and legally-binding heretofores and whereofs and hereinafters screaming by like the Concorde in a tailwind.
What's the game? I figure this: Some judge, somewhere, decided potential auto-lease customers should be supplied with all pertinent information about these programs so they didn't just blindly sign up and get stung by the details later.
But then, some crafty lawyer reasoned that merely exposing potential customers to all the conditions and restrictions was enough to keep the corporate gluteus maximus covered; neither legal canon nor ethics required anyone actually be able to take it in. Miss a payment and have to hand in your firstborn? Hey, it was right there on the TV, plain as day; it's not our fault you can't process the king's English at 10,000 words a minute!
Too bad they zip that stuff past you so fast; some of it makes mighty interesting fare. Mighty interesting.
I recall one company, not long ago, that touted its big "Zero Down Payment," then in the next breath said "$1,024 payment due at lease signing."
Now, maybe the lawyers can argue that that $1,024 isn't technically a down payment, not by name, at least. But it's (A) $1,024, and (2) "due at lease signing" -- and a thousand dollars paid up front spells "down payment" in my book. Probably in yours, too.
Of course, it all came and went in a fraction of a second, so don't feel bad if you never noticed it.
But you have to wonder what else you aren't catching.
