Politics & Power Quote by Morris Hite

Hite’s question isn’t really a question; it’s a courtroom tactic. “Is advertising moral?” sounds like an invitation to ethical scrutiny, but he immediately moves the jury’s attention to a safer terrain: outcomes. By stapling advertising to “the American free enterprise system,” he frames critique as an attack on the whole national project, not a specific industry practice. The phrase “part and parcel” does heavy work here: it naturalizes advertising as an unavoidable organ of capitalism rather than a set of choices about persuasion, truth, and power.

The subtext is classic mid-century business confidence: morality is measured by material abundance, and the scoreboard is economic growth. “I challenge anybody” signals a preemptive strike against reformers, journalists, and consumer advocates who were beginning to argue that advertising doesn’t just inform markets; it manufactures desire, launders status anxiety into purchasing, and can reward manipulation. Hite turns that uncomfortable claim into a comparative dare: find a better system. It’s a rhetorical pivot that treats the moral question as a referendum on capitalism versus everything else, a move designed to make dissent look naive or un-American.

Context matters. In a Cold War-era culture that sold itself on prosperity as proof of ideological superiority, the line “so many in so short a time” echoes the broader triumphalist narrative: mass consumption equals mass freedom. Hite isn’t defending the truthfulness of ads; he’s defending their legitimacy by aligning them with the fastest story America liked to tell about itself.