Part One: Edward Bernays: The Founding Father of Lies

In episode 75, Robert is joined by Jamie Loftus to discuss How Edward Bernays Invented America (And Propaganda).

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M what's involuntary my celibates. I'm Robert Evans, host Behind
the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything you
don't know about the very worst people in all of history.
And one of those very worst people in all of
history is the person who cut the hair of the
dog of my guest today, Jamie Loftus. Jamie, if I'm

(00:22):
if I'm not mistaken, your dog got a terrible haircut
and is ugly. Now, yeah, I think we can all.
I mean, you saw the picture. He looks like Lord Farquad.
He used to be one of the sexiest dogs in
the game, really getting and it was like this was
the first time that he was taken on a walk
and received no compliments because he looks like ship. Now

(00:42):
he's going to have to, you know, develop a personality. Yeah,
he looks like, as you said, an in cell, which
is why I picked the opening for the show that
I opened Perfect Circle. Yeah, he is now going to
start really yammering on about bone structure. Yeah, he's gonna
rent a van and ram a. It's probably not something
worth joking about. Yeah, the dog looks like shit. But

(01:07):
you know, Jamie, because of our our subject for this week,
I've learned that if you want your dog to get
compliments again, the answer is not to get him a
better haircut. The answer is to just simply change all
of America's standards towards dog beauty. And today we're going
to talk about the man who can tell you how
to do that. Are subject today is Edward Burne's. Yes, Yes,

(01:32):
do you know who Edward Burne's was? No, I'm coming
in colder than usual on this one. I'm I love it,
I love it. Well, let's let's talk about Eddie b
ed burn Uh, Sophie. We'll pull up a picture of
him and I'll cue Sophie and on when to show
it to you? And you can you can? You can
give me that judgment. I'm gonna I'm gonna read my

(01:53):
little intro first, though. So in common parlance, the term
founding fathers is applied to the men who literally founded
this country, either at the end of a rifle or
a pen, and from a literal standpoint, that does make sense,
whatever else you want to say about them. Dudes like
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin did start this
thing we call the United States, but the country they
found it only bears a passing resemblance to the one

(02:15):
we live in today. So for my money, we should
expand our ideas of the founders to include the people
who are most responsible for making America into the place
it is right now, at this moment in time, for
all of the people who live here. And by that
measure of the term, it's possible that no single man
deserves to be called a founding father of this nation
more than Edward Burnet's. Eddie liked to be known as

(02:35):
the father of public relations, which is only part true.
He and another guy named Ivy Lee both have a
pretty solid claim on that title, But calling what Berness
did PR gives an incomplete picture of the man's accomplishment.
Edward Burnet's invented mass manipulation of the American populace to
achieve specific ends, and in doing so, he invented modern America.
So this is the guy we're talking about today. The

(02:56):
first PR man I mean, isn't just saying you're the
father of PR, even though you're not just good PR.
It's fucking fantastic PR. Yeah, that's just good spin Berne's
that's just good evidence. Otherwise, and I'm not going to
look it up. I am. He lived to be a
hundred and three years old. Yeah, he he never died
until he finally did. Like he should have died so

(03:18):
much earlier because he was a real piece of ship,
but he just kept being alive. Yeah, it really does. Yeah,
like the like the toxicity of a person can really
preserve you well. And he's one of these terrible people
who like made really good healthcare decisions for himself and
was always a very healthy person, which are like the
worst terrible people, like the health nuts who were monsters. Yeah.

(03:40):
Like when Steve Jobs is like slashing his green jee
You're like, get over yourself. Yeah, it's like because I
need to live forever. Yeah, But unlike Jobs, Berne's picked
health stuff that actually worked. Apparently, sick roast Robert, take
that job, Steve Jobs, and you're dead ass alright. Edward
Louis Berne's was born in Vienna, Austria, in ninety one.

(04:04):
His father, Eli and mother Anna Freud. Berne's came from
a middle class Jewish background. On his mother's side, they
were perhaps a little bit above middle class due to
a very famous relative, her brother Sigmund As in Sigmund Freud,
the guy who thinks we all want to funk our moms.
Sigmund Freud is his uncle. Yeah, whoa are they closed?

(04:25):
Oh yeah, yeah they were fucking tight. Yeah they hung out.
There was Actually he helped Freud like get along when
he was like older and like he was having trouble
making money, like Berne's helped sell Freud's books and stuff
over in the US and get him speaking deals and ships.
So like they were like, like, fucking tight, I'm doing that.
You can't see the gesture over the audio, but I'm

(04:48):
doing that. That gesture everyone knows, the tight gesture your fingers. Yeah,
that is already deeply fucked. Okay, so your uncle is Freud.
He's peddling all these this weird stuff that I sort
of agree with, but mostly think it's more of a
hymn thing. Freud is always like like the first twenty
of everything he says is right, and then he just

(05:10):
goes off the rails, right, and then he starts talking
about how he wants to fuck his mom, and you're like, yeah, okay,
that's fine, but don't stop projecting on the rest of us. Yeah,
he's like a guy who's really good at like building roads,
but doesn't know where to build the roads too, so
he just he just randomly starts making roads in the

(05:31):
middle of nowhere and they lead to cliffs and stuff.
That's that's that's Sigmund Freud, father of psychiatry. Also a
coke addict, and I guess coke addicts like blazing random true.
Oh yeah, he was way into cocaine. Um yeah, super
huge into cocaine. The first book he wrote was called
On Cocaine, which was about doing cocaine. That's where psychiatry

(05:54):
comes from. That's hardcore and I appreciate him more than
I did one minute. Oh yeah, yeah, he's my favorite
coke addict. That isn't a Hollywood producer. That's a cool
like that's if some like a contemporary like thought leader
wrote a book called like Jeweling for a long time
like that. Man. All right, I'm a born so he's

(06:16):
he's the nephew of the world's most famous coke addict
slash scientist. Now, Austria in the eighteen nineties was not
exactly the best place and time to be Jewish. When
Eddie was one, his parents moved the family to New
York City, where his father went on to become a
moderately successful grain merchant. Growing up, Edwards family was not rich,

(06:37):
and there were some moments of financial strain when times
were tough, but for the most part they managed an
upper middle class existence. Now. His father, Eli Bernes, was
not abusive or violent to his children, but he was
a very German father, and that meant he was seen
as more of a force of nature by his kids
than like a loving and supportive parent. Years later, Edward

(06:57):
would write quote the household during the day, it around mother.
In the evenings and on holidays and Sundays, my father
dominated everything and everyone, intimidating all of us with his
unpredictable temperament. My earliest recollection of him is that of
a heavy set man leaving the house every weekday and
Saturday morning for a place called downtown to make money.
My mother was constantly on the alert to prevent explosions

(07:17):
of father's temper. Cooking odors were anathema. He would sniff
the air like a lion when he stepped into the
vestibule of the house each evening if someone had forgotten
to close the dumb waiter, and odors sifted up from
the kitchen through the house. He would call out and
allowed stern voice open the windows. My mother would rush
to the windows and throw them open, regardless of outside weather.
I never knew why my father was so obsessed with details.

(07:38):
So that's that's his dad, That's how he relied. And
it's worth noting he capitalizes the M and mother, but
does not capitalize the F and father. Another another sick
burn there, I don't I mean, yeah, it's his dad.
Just sounds like God, yeah, the force of nature thing.
It's so weird. I cannot really at all is someone

(08:02):
with a very meek father. But it seems like okay,
so so his dad needs attention and his mom is
terrified of him, and I'm sure that bodes very well
for their personal life. Yeah. Yeah, And it's one of
those things that voted like this is actually a very
German thing, Like the way his family worked was pretty
normal for German families. A couple of years ago, I
interviewed an old guy who had been in the Hitler

(08:23):
youth as a kid and was like fourteen when World
War Two ended, and when he talked about his childhood,
he made a point of noting that, like you didn't
speak to your father directly unless he asked you a question.
Like on Sundays when the family had a single egg,
his dad would eat the egg and they would all watch,
Like you didn't start eating food until your dad started eating,

(08:44):
Like dad was like the dictator of the family. And
this guy was like that was pretty normal in Germany
at the time. It was like a way, like especially
turn of the century Germany. And I really hate that
egg things. Yeah, it's funked up, right, I ever heard that.
It's super fun up and it just like it feels
like weirdly symbolic, even if they don't mean it to be.

(09:04):
They're like, oh, yeah, no, we have to watch daddy
eat an egg. Well, and it's this guy who again
like grew up in the Hitler youth, connected uh, the
way that like families were structured in Germany to how
fascism was able to get such a hold on the country.
He was like, we were already kindly used to this
idea because of how we grew up with our fathers
like that. Anyway, that's the connection this guy made when

(09:27):
I read about Bun daddy eat an egg. Never watch
your father eat an egg. I never do it. My
dad and I used to do this weird egg thing.
But it was it wasn't like that. It was like
my dad and I used to do this weird egg thing.
Is a sentence that can go a lot of waste.
What if I just what if I chose to just
like not getting more specifically, anyways, I used to do

(09:49):
this weird egg thing. We used to do this this
We used to eat and we would each have an
over easy egg and then we would time we would
both swallow yolks hole but at the same time, and
then we'd high five. That's horrible, German. That's the worst
story ever. I'm I'm making the rule right now that

(10:14):
if anyone listening to this ever sees their father eat
an egg, start pelting him with rocks. No more fathers
are allowed to eat eggs. You're enabling fascism if you
watch daddy eating, stop your parents. You're just your dad
from eating eggs. I guess it's fine for your mom,
unless that gets creepy. Yeah, anyway, I'm going to read
another quote Burns wrote about his dad. My sisters and

(10:38):
I stood in awe of our father. We observed silence
in his presence until we were addressed When he left
the house in the morning, he called goodbye to us
from the hall. We then ran from wherever we were
and pecked a farewell on his bearded cheek. After dark
he returned. I saw him for a few moments after supper,
before I was sent to bed. He occasionally raised his
voice to us in commanding tones, which had the shock
effect of a New York traffic cop on a timid motorist.

(10:59):
His awesome personality made corporal punishment unnecessary, so he doesn't
get hit at all by his dad. There's no no abuse.
But it's like this is the strictness of the family.
He grows up and Edward hates it, Like he really
doesn't like his parents relationship. He doesn't seem to like
the way his dad does things, and he grows up
wanting to live a life as different from the life

(11:21):
as parents lived as possible. That's like an early motivator
for him. Yeah, I wonder what, I wonder what old
Sigmunds making of this marriage. Yeah, I don't, I don't know.
I don't think I have. I I didn't come across
any evidence of Sigmunds psychoanalyzing his own nephew. Um he
seems mostly worried about money. Yeah, probably just something about fucking.
Should have fucked your mom, kid, This wouldn't have happened.

(11:45):
Classic Sigmund Freud, always telling kids to funk their mom. So. Uh.
Eli wanted his son Eddie to get into agriculture and
pick a career that was in line with the family
business of selling grain. But Eddie had zero desire to
do anything even vaguely related to agricultural work. He graduated
from the Agricultural College at Cornell University in nineteen twelve.

(12:06):
Uh So he was this is something that everyone listening
should be able to identify with. He was like yet
another middle class kid with a degree in a field
that he didn't want to work in. Uh like half
of my friends. Uh. He worked for a brief time
decoding cables about the grain trade and living off of
dad's money in New York until one day in December
nineteen twelve, when he wound up meeting his old friend

(12:28):
Fred Robinson on the morning trolley. Now he and Fred
had worked on the school paper back when they were
in high school, and now Fred's dad had handed his
son control of two academic journals. He happened to own
the Medical Review of Reviews and the Dietectic and Hygienic Gazette.
Fred asked his old friend Eddie for help in running
both papers. Next, according to the Father of Spin by

(12:48):
Larry Tye quote, they used the Medical Review to argue
against women wearing corsets with stays and to encourage shower baths.
They published expert opinions on health controversies, a regular, relatively
novel approach, and they write something even newer to promote
the journal and its advertisers, distributing free copies to most
of the hundred and thirty seven thousand licensed physicians in
the United States. So Eddie gets like a chance to

(13:12):
break into publishing and immediately is this guy with new
fresh ideas that nobody had thought of before. This is
generally positive so far. Yeah, nothing, nothing bad. Putting women
in cages and let them take a shower every once
in a while. Yeah he is, Eddie. Eddie Burnet's is
a feminist icon. By the way. Wow, interesting, Yeah he is.

(13:33):
He's a weird feminist icon and a problematic one. But
credit where it's due. He was like an early guy
being like these these these these chest prisons we put
women in our are seemed like a bad idea. Perhaps
he'll get angry, maybe they're uncomfortable. Well that's that's I mean,
I guess that's the least you can do with a
with a medical journal. They're just like, hey, stop putting

(13:55):
your wife in prison. Yeah, don't imprison her lungs in
a cage. Now I'm on. I'm on team Eddie so far. Yeah, yeah,
we're all on team Eddie so far. Uh So. About
two months into his new job, Eddie Burnet's came across
a review written by a doctor about a play that
was just now starting to take off in New York,

(14:16):
or that had just been written. It hadn't even performed yet,
and the play was called Damaged Goods. It was about
a man with syphilis who gets married and spawns a
syphilitic child. Now, this is about the most risque subject
you can imagine. At the time, people in nineteen twelve
did not talk about STDs, and like any context, like
doctors didn't like talking about them. Um. So the play

(14:39):
both dealt with the subject frankly and dealt with the
common remedies people attempted to use to deal with the illness.
So it was like like a groundbreaking thing that you
would like discuss STDs at all in a popular play
the rent of its time. Yeah, it was the rent
of its time exactly. It really is like kind of
in line with that. Yeah. So Eddie and Fred published

(14:59):
that review, but decided that just like publicizing the play
itself wasn't enough. So Burne's reached out to a guy
named Richard Bennett, who was a popular actor who had
expressed an interest in taking part in Damaged Goods. And
he told Bennett, quote, the editors of the Medical Review
of Reviews support your praiseworthy intention to fight sex pruriency
in the United States by producing bruise play Damaged Goods,

(15:20):
you can count on our help. So, because of his
really traditional upbringing and like how how kind of cloistered
his family life had been, Eddie grew up wanting to
like break as many taboos as humanly possible, and Damaged
Goods gave him a perfect opportunity to do this. So
he attached himself and the Medical Review of Reviews to
the project as a sort of proto pr firm. His

(15:41):
plan was to essentially gain funding to produce the play
um and to get people to go to it and
make it a financial success success by turning the play
into a cause celeb where basically like he was, he
was staging as like, if you go to this play,
you're fighting the cause of prurians. See, you're like fighting prudishness. Yeah. Yeah,

(16:02):
it's literally Rent, so where people are like, yeah, I
helped I've seen Rent before. Yeah, I helped raise awareness
of AIDS by watching this play. That's exactly the same
thing Bern's is having people do, but in nineteen freaking twelve. Yeah,
damaged goods unrelated is just a great name for anything.
I would see any damaged goods. I would see anything

(16:24):
called damaged goods. Yeah, even if it was it kind
of sounds like a hair band, I would still see it, though.
I would see it if it was a movie starring
Jeremy Renner. H And I'm I'm not a Renner a
Ritter fan, but you're not a Jeremy Renner fan. I'm
not I'm not a Renter stand Yeah. Oh god, didn't
he like try stand up or something. He's like tried
stand up and he hates women. Love that. I don't know,

(16:47):
but he is. I saw one picture of him from
the New Avengers movie. And I thought that guy looks
like damaged Goods when he when he had the giant
Samurai tattoo on his arm. That's some damaged Goods, right,
I think. So that's the phase of Damaged good Jeremy
Renner with a giant Samurai tattoo. There is a brief

(17:07):
amount of time where both Jeremy Renner and and Hate
were like hitting up bar shows that it was just
like can you get out of here? Like go get get,
get especially canceled. I don't know. I think Jeremy Renner
was born canceled, and that's what gives him his great power.
Born to be canceled will be the name of my
next play. That's his other arm tattoo, his second sleeve.

(17:31):
So Edward Burnet's for the Medical Review of Reviews Sociological
Fund Committee at age twenty one uh and like the
Sociological Fund Committee was essentially like the organization he made
to fund the play Damaged good So he raised money
from people like John Rockefeller and the Vanderbilts in order
to put on the show. His plan was wildly successful,

(17:53):
and the Sociological Fund Committee raised huge amounts of money.
Damaged Goods was a hit, and it inspired Berne's to
launch a series of other plays aimed at exposing other
utra aspects of society, drugs, white slavery, anything that stirred controversy.
After tasting success for the first time in his life,
Eddie took the opportunity to travel to Austria and visit
his famous uncle, Sigmund. They talked and walked and traded

(18:16):
ideas about the functioning of the human mind. When Eddie
got back to New York in late nineteen thirteen, he'd
become obsessed with his uncle's idea about how unconscious drives
from childhood impact the way people behave as adults. Burns
realized that if you could figure out what unconscious drives
motivated people, he could manipulate those people on a massive scale.
So he starts with like, I'm gonna get people to

(18:38):
see this play about syphilis by convincing them that it's
like an act of like a humanitarian act to watch
this this piece of entertainment that's successful. So he starts
doing it with other things drugs and white slavery and stuff,
and he's really just titillating people, but he makes them
feel like they're accomplishing something, and he realizes that like
he's tapped into some sort of drive people have to

(18:58):
do better. So then goes to Austria talks to his
uncle sneaky things. They're just like, you're super woke, but
what you don't know is that I'm taking all of
the money. Like okay, well exactly. Well so his first
project after getting back was a comedic play called Daddy
Long Legs, which basically seems you're back on now come

(19:23):
for a second. The descriptions of it make it seem
like it's just like almost a shot for shot rip
off of Little or fan Anny. Like the plot is
literally that a poor girl comes up from the street
and gets adopted into wealth and privilege. Um so, obviously
I don't know, probably for some weird aspect of nineteen twelve,
like thirteen vernacular. Um now, you may notice that the

(19:49):
idea of a rip off of Little or Fannnny that's
not at all risque. It's not like syphilis or white
slavery or anything like that. Uh So, how is Eddie
going to make people feel like going to this show
is activism? If if it's just about some some poor
kid getting adopted by a rich guy. I know, all right,
well he found a way. Yeah, he found a way,

(20:12):
uh a little bit. Basically, he he uses as an
excuse to launch like a charity campaign aimed at encouraging adoption.
So like this is like He's like, okay, this play itself.
There's nothing risque about it. So I can make people
feel good by making them feel like buying tickets to

(20:32):
this is supporting the cause of getting poor kids adopted
by rich kids or rich parents and stuff. Um. So
he forms groups on college campuses and high schools to
raise money that's aimed specifically at getting like private middle
class and upper middle class families to take in orphans. Um.
One of the colleges he goes to is Vassar, and

(20:54):
he arranges a meeting with some influential undergraduates and gets
like a writing in the front page of a upland newspapers. Um.
But they only donate about fifteen cents of money, which
is fine. He's not actually trying to raise money for anything.
There's no actual charity here. He just wants to be
able to say Vasser supports this charity campaign, which they yeah, yeah, exactly,

(21:16):
And Vasser gets really pissed at him, but the stories
are already on the front page. There's no there's no
turning it back. So like this is the tactic this
guy invents um, which is you may recognize as familiar
with the way things work today sort of. Um, so yeah,
he's he's, he's he's he's a trend setter. Uh, he's

(21:36):
he's established, like the way pr out of work, where
it's like I wanna make it seem like these fancy
institutions support what I'm doing. So I'm just going to
take a picture with a couple of people there, and
folks will read between the lines and assume the college
supports what we're doing and assume there's a real charity,
even though there's not at all a real charity and
no kids are getting matched up with rich parents. So

(21:57):
he's a he's a genius. Now, Yeah, cool guy. At
age twenty three, Edward took on his biggest client yet,
the Russian Ballet. Now this was a particularly tough task,
since macho American men had little inclination to watch a
bunch of Europeans and fancy tights bound around on stage
like a bunch of fairies. Ballet was seen as effeminate.

(22:19):
In order to fight that expression of toxic masculinity, Burnet
has used another expression of toxic masculinity and published articles
in prominent newspapers with titles like our American men ashamed
to be graceful again. He's really smart. I like him.
That's that's good. I mean, it's just like you just

(22:40):
have to make that's such a weird angle to come
just like, oh, sorry, bro, are you like afraid to
like enjoy a gorgeous ballet? I'm sorry you can't enjoy
the beautiful shape, like the beautiful expression of a man's
glorious glute muscles bounding in perfect symmetry on the stage.
You don't like watching his quads bounce? I like, just

(23:03):
like the image of an angry bro outside of like
a ballet theater. Just they're just being like, dude, like what, oh,
I can't just go out and see fucking Romeo and
Juliette with my friends? What then are you talking about?
You're saying it's not manly to enjoy a manage tightly
wrapped package as it as it bounds up and down

(23:26):
on the stage, Like I can't watch that? Are you
are you? Are you scared of grace. I'm still not
there too. I'm just like, why want my boyfriend go
to the Family of the Opera with me? Why? Why? Well,
because watch musicals that slap. That's the that's the update.
Does Does Fantom of the Opera slap? Yes, it's well,

(23:48):
you know you know what else slaps, Jamie loftus, you
know what, you know what slaps even harder than Fantom
of Coming And I hate it. The products and services
that support this show, inder program, these slaps, these slap
like the Phantom of the Opera, but unlike the Phantom
of the Opera, you don't know where this story is

(24:08):
going from a lifetime growing up in American pop culture.
So this will another hater, not a not a hater,
but I'm saying, like the Phantom of the Opera, we
all know how the Phantom of the Opera goes. No
one knows what these ads are going to be. They
could be for a belt company, they could be for
coke industries, they could be for the Church of Scientology,

(24:31):
they could be for Blackwater. Like, anything could happen when
ads come on. It could be anything. Yeah, So let's
spin the roulette wheel of capitalism and see whereupon it lands.
We're back. Oh my god, what a ride those ads were.

(24:54):
I you know what, I didn't expect it to be
a Raytheon ad um, But now that it's run, I've
been thinking I really need some new missile guidance systems
because I have I have a lot of Yemen to
shoot at. Suggestion is very strong. Yeah, you don't realize
how many ways there are to kill until you listen
to the advertisements. Exactly, I'm gonna bomb so many uh

(25:19):
school buses in foreign countries. Thanks to these beautiful Raytheon
products and and their sponsorship money really keeps the show
will floats. So thank you to Raytheon. Yeah, it's really
cool to get to finally see pictures of your large
mansion that you live in. Yes, yes, built with Raytheon money. Yeah.
Oddly enough, the main demographic for Behind the Bastards is

(25:42):
the Saudi royal family, so they this is really a
good place for Raytheon to advertise. Yeah. Alright, let's get
back to Edward Burnet's who is related to this because
he invented advertising in context. Yeah, revolutionize bullshit. He revolutionized bullshit.

(26:03):
So Berne's had realized with his his campaign for the
Russian ballet. Uh, that he could sort of change American
opinions about things like European men wearing tights by pushing
think pieces into popular publications like Vanity Fair and creating
the illusion of a national discussion. As long as that's
done to this day, Yeah, yeah, like he was. He's

(26:26):
the first person to figure it out, and it's completely
destroyed our our civil society. And remember that article that
was like, why aren't millennials buying diamonds? Just like starting
a conversation that no one was in the middle of. Meanwhile,
the question with all of my fellow millennials is more
along the lines of like, why can't I afford to

(26:46):
buy my insulin? Why did Why did I go to
a dentist who accept group on? That's why are people
able to afford a dentist? How do I? How do
I in my vanity bones without getting a new credit card? Yeah?
Did you know that there are a group on? Dentist? Robert?

(27:07):
I am not surprised by that. It's a hard industry
for dentists. I went to one. She sneezed in my mouth,
but I think she did a good dental work. The
last time I went to a dentist. That that's horrifying.
It took me a second to catch up with that.
She sneezed into my mouth. She wasn't wearing a mask.
Is that? What is that? Was? She like those painless

(27:29):
dentists were like what she brags about it, I'm a
maskless dentist. Didn't need to get happen. Yeah, mask off.
She I'm thirty cheaper than the other dentists, but I
will get my fluids inside of you. Yeah. The crazy
thing is, I'm pretty sure that the gum procedure itself
went just fine. But she she was like talking about
Game of Thrones and she sneezed in my mouth. That's awesome.

(27:49):
That's some solid dentistry. Yeah. I mean, hey, if I had,
you know, had I gotten health insurance, had I had
it been an option in my life, I wouldn't have
this gorgeous anecdote to share are with you on this
this podcast, So really, you know, what is dystop you?
I don't know. The last time I went to a
dentist was when I had health insurance, and it was

(28:10):
to get my wisdom teeth removed. And I understood then
that that was the last dentist trip where I was
likely to get hydro code down. So I just have
not been back because why would you? Why would you
go after that? There? I guess that's fair. I just
my mouth kept bleeding. My mouth kept bleeding. Mouths are
meant to bleed, Jamie, there is. I was just I
was starting to get nervous about how my mouth would

(28:32):
bleed in any situation. If I started to feel any feeling,
my mouth would respond by bleeding. Now, if your mouth
stops bleeding, that's when you have a health issue. You
want your mouth to bleed all the time. It's well,
that's fair, it's but if you see enough pictures of
yourself doing stand up with your mouth actively bleeding, people
start to think it's a bit and not just how

(28:54):
your mouth is well play. It is a bit either way.
If your if your mouth is bleeding, it means you're
drinking plan of blood, which means you have high iron levels,
which is what we need if you can't afford to
go to the doctor. I love this spin. You're going
full Burnet's thank you. I'm I I really have learned
a lot from him. So as the nineteen teens rolled on,

(29:14):
Edward Burnet's was making very good money on the cutting
edge of the field that hadn't really existed before he
got into it, public relations. Tragically, his success did not
at all impress his father. Burne's later wrote, quote, my
father's attitude toward my activities remain less than lukewarm. He
was disappointed that his son had turned press agent. He
enjoyed good theater in concerts. To occupy an orchestra sea

(29:35):
a performance was one thing, But for his only son
to make a career of the theater, in daily contact
with actors and managers with something else. I opened the window.
Get this actor's stink out of here. Yeah, he thought
his dad thought actors were gross, and he thought it
was gross that his son had become basically a press
agent for the theater. I mean, wouldn't you feel the

(29:56):
same way. Yes, I hate the theater and all people
who were involved with it. Yeah. I think that's a
reasonable way to feel. Get get getting TV like every
self respecting actor board trotting. Yeah, where's your is he
and Sag? I'm not fucking interested? Yeah he's he is
older than Sag. I suspect. Now. When World War One

(30:19):
kicked off in August of nineteen fourteen. It was, you know,
probably the greatest calamity in human history. The whole nations
in the continent of Europe were utterly ruined by war
on a scale never before imagined. Luckily, for America and
for Edward Burnet's it also meant an opportunity to get
into some new business. For America. That new business was
mass arms sales. For Edward, that new business was convincing
Americans that getting involved in a European war was a

(30:42):
good idea. Now, this is gonna be hard to get
your mind around, Jamie, but there was a time when
Americans thought going to war in foreign countries was a
bad idea. Oh see, that's not something I feel like
we can relate with in our lifetimes. No, no, no,
it was not. Okay, Daddy little legs, how's it has
been a do it? How is Daddy longlegs going to

(31:02):
do this? Well? His first big idea was to get
out an article in the magazine Musical America urging musicians
to help America get on board with the war by
having singers performed songs about the U. S. Military whenever
they performed at clubs. So that was you know that
can't all be great home runs. That is, that is
one thing that seemed to us to work in this

(31:23):
country that I truly can't understand, like hearing even like
post nine eleven and like this this, you know, it
actually did work in nine eleven. I grew up in
a conservative household, and I heard that, fucking well, I'm
proud to be an American where at least done, No,
I'm free. I heard that fucking every week of my

(31:44):
life in the run up to like the Iraq War.
Yeah that was. That was like the theme song of
We're going to the track if we support this horrible war. Yeah, yeah,
that was. And my parents were very moved by it,
especially after and eleven thought it was the most profound
song they'd ever heard. It was. So yeah, I guess

(32:04):
maybe that wasn't a dumb idea. It probably worked really
fucking well back then, and it worked really fucking well
in two thousand three. Yeah. Yeah, he was a trend setter.
So eventually Bern's work earned an interview with the Foreign
Press Bureau, who were the United States is proto propaganda
agency for the US military at that point in history. Um,

(32:25):
they were worried about hiring Burnet's because he came from
Austria and they thought that might make him not loyal
to the United States. But eventually they grew convinced that Berne's,
you know, was really a company man, and they gave
him a chance to serve the war effort directly. No. No, no,
he's a relentless capitalist. Yeah, he has he's he is
on board with capitalism. We're good, We're good. Yeah, I'm

(32:48):
gonna quote again from the father of Spen quote. Finally,
given his chance to serve, Eddie recruited Ford International Harvester
and scores of other American firms to distribute literature on
US wars to foreign contexts and post US propaganda in
the windows of six and fifty American offices overseas. He
distributed postcards to Italian soldiers at the front so they

(33:09):
could boost morale at home, and he planted propaganda behind
the German lines to so dissent. He organized rallies at
Carnegie Hall featuring freedom fighters from Poland, Czechoslovakia in other
states that were anxious to break free of the Austro
Hungarian Empire. In short, he helped win America over to
an unpopular war, using precisely the techniques he'd used to
promote Daddy Long Legs and the Russian ballet. Oh my god. Yeah, Okay,

(33:32):
so he's moved on from ballet to the First World War. Well,
he's gonna quite a jump there. I never overestimate the
confidence of a random guy. Yeah, well I successfully promoted
Daddy Long Legs better trying to like Mike fuck the
world up. Yeah, it's one of the I know, the

(33:54):
thought went through his head at some point, like if
I can put asses in seats on Broadway, I can
put dough boys in trenches in the Western Front. Wow.
I well, there's there's no bouncing back from this. And
it worked. It was it worked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was.
He was an integral part of winning the American people

(34:15):
over to World War One. Um. I mean there's really
appealing to the power of fomo. Is is powerful for anyone.
They're just like, are you serious? Like people are there
ship happening over there. It's one kind of dumb to
be a European in nineteen fourteen and think like, oh,
this war is gonna be awesome. We gotta get into it,
like everybody wants a little bit. It's gonna be over

(34:37):
real quick, Like I want to have a partner it.
I want to have a chance to be a hero.
That's one kind of dumb, and it's an understandable kind
of dumb if you know European history up to that point.
It's a whole other kind of dumb to watch three
years of unspeakable slaughter in the trenches of Western Europe
and be like, yeah, we we should really get in that.
Like this seems like it's gonna be a great tea.

(34:59):
Let's hop on this trade, guys. But it does. But
it does work. It does work. Uh, Imperial Germany is defeated,
thus ensuring peace in Europe forever more. Um, I haven't
read in the European history past nineteen eighteen, but I
think I think I think it went pretty well. It's
kind of a happily ever after kind of deal. Yeah,
seems like it seems like it. So there's an extent

(35:22):
to which, like obviously American involvement in the First World
War is one of those things that set off a
chain of events that you know, made the rise of
Nazi Germany inevitable. And you can't blame Edward Burnet's for that. Um,
he was, he was doing what he thought was best. Uh,
what you can blame him for is his work in

(35:42):
the tobacco industry, which ironically would go on to kill
more people than his work selling America on World Wars.
But first, it's so wild that, you know, like his
dad could have just been like, I love you. Yeah.
His dad actually did say that a lot, because we
have some letters between them. It seemed like his dad
could only communicate emotionally with his son through letters that

(36:05):
they wrote each other. But his dad was also like
really insistent that his son get into agriculture, which I
guess maybe he was right about it because it seems
kind of that Eddy, that would be fun and I
wish I'm going, Yeah, I was like, I mean, I

(36:26):
guess the world might be better out of you than that.
I wish that fathers were still pushing their kids to
do the same ship as them. That that's what a
what a fun what a fun trend that was for
most of human history. I mean I say that, like
I make fun of that idea of like Dad's like
like pushing their kids to the same thing they did.
But I wound up completely accidentally in the same career

(36:46):
field my dad was in without ever meaning to because
he was a radio guy for thirty years. And now
look at look at fucking me, Look at you. You're
on your goddamn microphone and your ray theon mansion, and
I'm also reporting on the Boston Bruins for local paper.
You can't, you can't, you can't escape it yet. Genetics

(37:08):
is destiny, um, except for Edward Burns who, instead of
farming tobacco just sold it to millions of Americans. We're
going to talk about that in a little bit, Jamie,
but first I feel like we should have a little
detour and talk about Edward Burne's feminist icon. Wow. This

(37:28):
is yeah, this is this is my content. Okay, great,
you're ready. You're ready. The judge of that Berne's was
a long standing women's rights advocate and was well ahead
of his time on just about every gender issue. He
you know, supported women's suffrage before women could actually vote.
He and his wife, Doris Fleischmann, got married in nineteen
twenty two after a long lingering courtship. When Edward had

(37:50):
opened his first independent company, which he called a publicity
direction office, in nineteen nineteen, Doris was his first employee.
They fell in love, but we're so focused on a
voiding what they saw as the mistakes of their parents
that they kept their relationship hidden for years. Eddie's sister
actually had her husband adopt the Burnet's name when they
married so the family line could go on, because she
was that convinced that her brother would never marry. He

(38:12):
was like kind of like a hippie sort of dude,
where he's like, we're not gonna get married, We're gonna
do like, you know, a different sort of relationship that
that nobody else in America is on board like doing yet.
So he was like ahead ahead of his time on
that um. Now, on paper, the union between Doris Fleischmann
and Eddie Burnet's seemed like it was like the wokest

(38:33):
one in history up to that point. They got married
without a wedding ring. They did not inform their parents.
Uh and you know, back before the wedding, they both
joined something called the Lucy Stone League, which was an
advocacy group dedicated to fighting for women's right to maintain
their maiden name and not change their maiden name after marriage.
That is cool and true to their word. After their marriage,

(38:55):
Doris kept her maiden name. When they signed into the
hotel where they would spend their wedding night, she registered
for the room instead of Eddie, and she registered under
the name Doris Fleishman. This was the first time any
woman had ever done this in American history, and like
to give you an idea of where gender relations were
at the time, multiple major national newspapers reported on the

(39:17):
story of a woman signing in for a hotel under
her name. Wow. There were headlines like this bride registers
under her maiden name and just independent with the exclamation point. Yeah.
It's like, so that's where we are at this time.
But you know, Eddie Burne's is and he and his

(39:37):
wife like our fucking trend setters here. Um oh wow,
I mean talk about multitudes on Mr. His friends must
have thought he was such a cock that's funny. Yeah, yeah,
that's something that's not nothing. That's not nothing. And he was,
you know, in the nineteen twenties, was an advocate of

(39:58):
the idea that housewives deserved to be paid by their
husbands because he believed they were doing yeah, yeah, real
work and that they ought to be compensated for it. Um,
And because he and his wife were business partners. He
split the revenue from his agency with his wife evenly, um,
so they were equal partners on paper at least. So

(40:20):
his wife, Yeah, is she hot? Sophie, there is she hot? Wait?
We gotta look him up. Yeah, we gotta look him up.
We gotta, we gotta reduce Joras Fleischmann, women's rights pioneer two.
Is she hot? I should have said earlier. I don't
think Edward Rene's is hot. His head looks like a cube.
I would not call him hot. His his wife is beautiful. Okay, yeah,

(40:44):
you do what she says, cube head. So well, actually,
see this is where it gets kind of sucked up.
So Jamie, nice friends, It's uh, this is a complicated
story because everything I've just told you is true, but
it leaves out an important aspect of the story, which

(41:09):
is what Doris herself actually wanted. So I'm gonna quote
again from the book The Father of Spin quote. Doris
also was a pioneer for women's rights, but winning the
right to use her maiden name wasn't one of her
proudest achievements. Eddie admitted it was he who had insisted
on their joining the Lucy Stone League, bringing a reluctant
Doris with me, and it was he who pushed her

(41:30):
to use her maiden name on their wedding night because
I had an interfere that marriage, though I wanted it
fiercely with Doris, would take away some of my liberties
as an individual if there were a missus added to
my name. So years later, Doris actually would adopt her
husband's last name, as she'd apparently wanted to do all along.
She never it was. It was played as this big

(41:52):
gesture of an independent woman making a strike for women's rights,
but she actually really wanted to take bernonas name and
he wouldn't let her. So yeah, it's it's it's it's
fucking complicated, right, Like that's some extremely weird Yeah, that's

(42:13):
it just does sort of ring as like yeah, whatever.
His fears are compounded with the fact that this all
got them pressed every time they would do something that
was a hashtag feminist win. Yeah, that is so oh,
that's like so many levels of emotional fuccory where I

(42:36):
don't know, I'm like, I'm just picturing these gas lighting
sessions of like are you telling me and do something bad?
It's like no, but like no one ever Doris. God,
it's so complicated. The only wokeman is also a fucking dick. Yeah,
it's it is the twenties, So I imagine that I

(43:01):
do yeah for fifty eight years? Yeah, I mean she
she She expressed happiness in their relationship. Doris Fleischmann was
a legitimate U pioneer of women's rights. She worked in
journalism long before that was common, and she was a
huge part of her husband's groundbreaking pr work. But in
spite of his insistence is that there's was an equal partnership,

(43:23):
Burnet's always focused on the Burnet's name in their work
and downplayed his wife's involvement in it during the decades
where that was a hindrance rather than an asset. Doris
was expected to maintain their home as well, like any
housewife of that era, but because Eddie was so woke
and uncomfortable with the idea of having his wife do
housework for him, she spent most of her life rushing
to and from their home ahead of him to ensure

(43:44):
that the house was an order, and to also ensure
that Eddie didn't see her putting the house in order
and Burnet's, their daughter, later said he wanted her to
be a feminist outside the house, but inside he wanted
her to be a Victorian wife. That's yeah, that's still
that's still happened. That's like, yeah, I would say a
solid of men who own uh, like the future is

(44:08):
female shirts are like still pieces of ship and like
expect too too much? Uh from well, good to know,
Good to know. Yeah, he's the original be where the
wokeman sort of stereotype. Yeah, Like the guy who brags
about being woke is usually quite dangerous. He's like, who's

(44:29):
that guy from Who's that guy from Orange as the
New Black who like wouldn't shut up about how woke
he was for three years and then everyone just stopped
casting him so he'd shut the funk up. He's like
that guy someone I don't I don't know who that
guy is. His name was Matt And I'll tell you
be shirtless. I mean, I'll say from my own part,

(44:51):
the only thing all brag about is accidentally drunkenly vomiting
on people that that I'm I'm close to, because because
I I Jamie am a true hero. Are you are
the true wokeman? Thank you? Thank you? And the woman
the person who has a problem moderating his intake of

(45:11):
intoxicants and has ruined many a shirt from his friends.
Matt mcgory, that was that was Mr Woke. I was thinking,
is that the guy? Yeah, the shirtless wokeman. Yeah? Okay,
god so gross, well, shirt full wokeman Eddie Burne's old
cube head. When Doris died in nineteen eighty, a professor

(45:32):
named Susan Henry was inspired by the obituary Edward Burns
wrote about his wife and you know, inspired her to
write a book about Doris Fleishman and several other female pioneers.
The book is titled Anonymous in their Own Names, which
is a solid fucking title. Uh. Professor Susan Henry reached
out to Edward Burns because he was still alive about
writing this book that would feature his wife heavily, and

(45:54):
he was enthusiastic in his desire to help Susan and
to talk up the accomplishments of his deceased wife. As
Susan dug more and more. Though, and talked to the
Burnet's daughters, she came to very critical conclusions about Eddie
and I'm gonna quote from her book now. After visiting
him in March I finished writing a paper about Fleishman
that was accepted for presentation at a national conference. I

(46:15):
sent him a copy nervously, though, since the paper's theme
was his dominance of her at home and in the
office and her lack of professional recognition. Once again he
surprised me. I have no criticisms whatsoever, he wrote to
me after reading it, except possibly one slight point. I
had overplayed her invisibility, he thought, and not been sufficiently
mindful of how their business would have suffered. Quote if

(46:36):
we had publicized a woman giving advice to men. This
was not a slight point at all, but he was
willing to treat it as if it were and to
invite me back. So again, that's Eddie's justification for why
he didn't give his wife the credit and she deserved
while they were actually doing the work, and waited until
decades later when women's rights was in vogue. That's certainly spin. Yeah,

(46:57):
he's the data spin Big Papa spins Jesus Now Edward
continued to work with Susan on her book in spite
of the fact that her work both revealed the great
role Doris had played in his innovations, which meant less
credit for him. This might seem to be somewhat to
Eddie's credit as a human being and evidence that he
was a man capable of seeing his own past flaws
and acknowledging them in the harsh light of the historical record.

(47:19):
But it's worth noting that Edward's own daughter Anne did
not take this charitable view of her father. Quote. When
I asked Anne Burnet's why she thought her father was
so helpful, even though by telling fleishman story, I was
undermining the soul credit he had received for their work,
she reminded me that one of his favorite phrases was
reflected glory. I was showing his good sense in choosing
her mother as his partner, she explained, you're flattering him.

(47:41):
I later realized that the timing of my research added
to the flattery. In contrast to the anti feminism of
the nineteen fifties that made it a problematic time for
Fleishman to disclose much about her career in a wife,
as many women so she barely mentioned it. The feminism
of the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties made this an
excellent time for Bernet's to call attention to her career.
He was willing to take less credit for their public

(48:02):
relations accomplishments if he could take full credit for having
been smart enough to marry and form a professional relationship
with this remarkable woman. So that's how Eddie Berne's daughter
analyzes everything that went on, and I just find very interesting.
I realize she's an author, isn't she his daughter? Because
I recognize her and I think I had to read

(48:23):
one of her books at some point. Well that, I mean,
that sounds that sounds accurate in terms of just like
I mean, those men are still out there, just like
a fair you know, the fair weather supporter of like
when it's I mean, this guy just sounds like yeah,
when it's when he when the world will give you
positive attention for being a feminist, he's a feminist, and

(48:44):
then when feminism is out, then cool, Well I hate yeah,
and I hate him. He's kind of would describe him
as like yeah, yeah, I mean he wasn't entirely a
fair other feminist. I got to give him that. Like,
there were things that he was very outspoken about before

(49:04):
it was popular, like him insisting that housewives get paid
was never a popular like that's still not a popular
and was just I mean just the general like even
if it's we don't know how genuine it is. But
like the fact that he said, like, you know, women
shouldn't be forced to work. Of course, it's like, that's
that's good. I like it. But then the fact that

(49:27):
he wasn't actually listening to his wife kind of really
puts a puts a bad taste in your mouth. Yeah
about old cute. Yeah, it's fucking complicated, um and weird
and uh, you know, it's a bad taste in my intentions, Robert. Why,
that's one of those things like when we talk about

(49:49):
like his his reputation or his his record with feminism,
there's a lot to criticize, there's a lot to praise.
I wouldn't call him a bastard on that because I
am a big believer and you have to judge people
by the standards of the time, and even with all
of the warts on his story, he's still better than
the average man for that time on that issue. Well,

(50:10):
that's yeah, I agree with like, And there is something
to be said for just being an influential person, Uh,
saying something that's not like popular, what no matter if
it's not even if it's done for pr like it
can still be helpful to the world. Uh well, I
mean yeah, he just kind of sounds like a like
a kind of flip floppy but sort of progressive. I

(50:33):
don't know, you know, at the end of the day,
sold a lot of cigarettes, and I guess I just
don't like it. And we are going to talk about
the cigarettes next because that's where we really get into
Edward Burnet's definitely a bastard. But before we talk about cigarettes,
Jamie loftus, Yes, let's talk about the fine products and
services that Raytheon provides. Products and services like the Hellfire

(50:58):
missile Guidance System, which, Jamie, let me tell you, if
there's a wedding party in Afghanistan that you want to
blow up with several dozen pounds of art X explosives,
there is no missile guidance system better than the ones
Raytheon makes. I love it. I'm looking at Raytheon merch
on now and boy do they have some graphic design. Yeah.

(51:21):
My favorite Raytheon shirt is I went to an afghan
wedding and all I got was peppered with shrapnel there. Like,
I don't know why I decided on Raytheon ad plugs today. Yeah,
I mean they really need I just like to say
it like how it sounds. Yeah, I'm I'm a raytheon
stand um for sure. Yeah. Products, we're back. We're talking

(51:52):
Eddie B and burn Daddy long Legs, the original Daddy
long Legs. He has his names to intro him as
like Pitball. Yeah yeah, and in fact he and pit
Bull are very closely related. That's not true, but let's
let's let's see if we can just get that light

(52:14):
a take off. Edward Burns would approve of me? Would
he could cooler? Would he be perceived as cooler or
less cool? Does your profile raise if you're related to
Mr three or five Mr Worldwide pit himself like Pitall? Yes,
I like pit Bull and that's my feminism pit Bull.

(52:37):
Is there anything more feminist than liking pit Bull than
Mr three or five Mr Worldwide? I don't know. I
don't know. Yeah, No, not at all, not at all.
It's that is the most feminist one can be. Exactly,
when we go to war with Iran, We're going to
air drop pit Bull into UH, into the country in
order to UH to lead a women's uprising against the regime.

(53:02):
That's that's how that's gonna work. It's going to be. Yeah,
the revolution will be scored to pit Bull, and the
revolution will of course be sponsored and supported by the
good people of Raytheon Pitbull x Raytheon is I mean
after forever, it's a match made in heaven. We don't know, Yeah, Yonline,

(53:23):
I believe it. Yeah, I believe because that's fucking Pitbull
branded hell Fire drones. That's that's a great that's a
great branding opportunity right there. So we're going to talk
about Edward Burns and the mother fucking tobacco industry and
Jamie Spoilers. When I say motherfucking I mean because his

(53:45):
work in tobacco fucked over a lot of mothers. I
thought it was another fried thing. If you know an
older woman who died from tobacco, it's probably Edward Burness.
False had a grandma who dropped from lung cancer. Only Yeah,

(54:05):
I mean, I didn't like my great aunts, so I
guess shout out. I mean, then you really can thank
Edward Burnet's and Edward Burnet's ensured that there would be
more sweet and low packets by taking her out of
the game early. So you're welcome Jamie, Yeah, thank you
so much so. World War One was, of course a

(54:26):
huge boon for the concept of smoking cigarettes. Prior to
the war, real men tended to prefer cigars or pipes, or,
if they were baseball players, chewing tobacco cigarettes excelled in
wartime due to how easily you could smoke them in
a trench. They became a standard part of military rations,
and hundreds of thousands of American men returned from Europe
with a fun new addiction in Edward and Doriss PR

(54:48):
firm was contracted by George Washington Hill, the head of
the American tobacco company. Hill's goal was to get women
to start smoking the company's biggest brand, Lucky strikes. Hey,
that works, can crack that market? That worked out? Yeah
it did it did that? Were yes, spoilers. This plan
works like fucking gangbusters. Now, at that point, only about

(55:10):
twelve percent of cigarettes were consumed by women, which representative
huge surge in lady smoking from like the way things
had been in the eighteen nineties, but wasn't nearly enough
to make big tobacco happy. He'll hit upon a brilliant theory,
since being skinny had just come into Vogue. If he
could convince women that cigarettes would help them lose weight,
he could get them super fucking addicted to tobacco. Hill

(55:33):
came up with the slogan on his own. Yeah. Yeah,
it really does. And Hill came up with the slogan
reach for a lucky instead of a suite, which is
a solid slogan. Yeah, he's a feminist, he is not intersectional.
Hill knew that he was going to need the talents
of the world's greatest admin to make the slogan work.

(55:55):
From the father of spend, yeah, I mean that's kind
of who John Draper is, kind of based on Edwards
without the whole square head thing. Yeah, except for much
better looking, although they both do have giant heads. Does
John Hamm have a big old head? Yeah, John, I've
seen John Hamm and he has a very large head.
Very good looking guy, but huge head. Well that's isn't that?

(56:18):
Like there's something about humans that are like they find
big heads cute, and that's why the powerpuff Girls look
that way. I'm not I'm not crazy here, I there's
it's the same reason we find babies cute because their
heads are big for their bodies and puppies too. Yeah,
all right, well, yeah, I like a big head. So yeah,

(56:40):
He'll had this idea for like an ad campaign, reach
for Lucky instead of a sweet, and he contracted with
Edward Burne's to make the idea work. So I'm gonna
quote again from the father of spin. Berne has launched
the campaign against sweets with his trident true tactic of
enlisting experts, in this case convincing Nicholas Murray, a photographer friend,
to ask other photographers and auris to sing the praises

(57:01):
of the thin. I have come to the conclusion. Murray
wrote that the slender woman who combining suppleness with grace
and grace with slenderness, who instead of over eating sweets
and desserts, lights a cigarette as the advertisements say, has
created a new standard of female loveliness. I'm interested in
knowing if my own judgment concurs with that of others,
and should be most happy to have your opinion on
the subject. Magazines and newspapers were also furnished with the

(57:22):
latest findings on the get thin trend for fashion editors
that meant photo after photo of slender Parisian models and
how coultured dresses for news editors and meant testimonials like
the one from the former chief of the British Association
of Medical Officers of Health warning that sweets cause tooth
decay and advising the correct way to finish a meal
is with fruit, coffee, and a cigarette. The fruit Dr

(57:43):
George F. Buchan continued, hardens the gums and cleans the teeth.
The coffee stimulates the flow of saliva in the mouth
and acts as a mouthwash, while finally the cigarette disinfects
the mouth and soothes the nerves. Cigarettes are dental there.
I you learned a lot from the twenties by knowing

(58:04):
people were told coffee is a mouthwash and cigarettes clean
your teeth, and we're like, all right, there is a
part of me that's like I would like to live
in that world for like a day. It would be nice.
It's like everyone was living in a Kesha song. Yeah,
it's so yeah, that's psychotic that I mean, it is crazy.

(58:29):
How I mean making cigarettes look feminine is it's such
like an advertising hack job that was so effective. But
it's like that was still My mom smoked cigarettes for
chicks basically, and my dad smoked boys cigarettes like my
dad did like Winston's and my mom does Missy Menthal
one twenties because they're thin and sexy and there's a

(58:53):
rainbow in the carton and that, like it's it works.
I hate it. It works. It's super or works. It's
the same reason why there's all these like like where
they have male patterned baby wipes. Now, yeah, like it's
and it's god, I mean it's like becoming a little
bit like more controversial to still be like arbitrarily gendering

(59:16):
stuff like that. But it is crazy how like how
recently it was so egregious of just like this one's
for and this is how you know, if you ever
want a really fun trip down an advertising rabbit hole,
look at all of the different handguns that are like
marketed towards women, like car and stuff like their lady
gun ads are it's great guns for like anything for

(59:41):
for the gals is just guns for gals. Guns for gals.
We gotta protect ourselves, two ladies. But look at like
this pink trigger like it's well it's it's it's lisp.
I mean you do see some of that. Mostly it's like, gals,
we know you all want to carry the biggest gun available,
but you don't want to ruin the lining of your
yoga pants. So like, here's yoga pants that are built

(01:00:02):
to carry a gun, or here's like a gun that's
designed to like go with the contours of feminine like
like fashion. It's really how could I pack a piece
and still look hot and still looked demure? Yeah, there's great.
There are these new things. I actually like these, but
there they sell them at like wart Walmart and Targets

(01:00:25):
and warget um. But they're these panic alarms to carry
around in case someone tries to attack you in the night.
But they just look look like heart key chains and
they're advertised with like, if you ever need to make
a big scene, girls, this is the accessory to have.
And it is basically a very small taser. Oh that's amazing,

(01:00:46):
make a big scene. It's beautiful and it all comes
descended from the mind of Eddie Burnet's so in his
quest to get more women smoking, he went directly to
hotels and restaurants and encourage them to add sick grits
to their dessert offerings. He oversaw print ads like this
beautiful piece of propaganda. I'm going to have Sophie show you,

(01:01:07):
uh it says on the top, Actually, Jamie, why don't you,
why don't you describe that ad for our listeners? Okay,
so in a in and a nice little Sarah font
at the top says to keep a slender figure, no
one can deny. And then it's a horny looking woman.
And then it's reach for lucky instead of a suite,

(01:01:28):
and then it says the thing that we all know
from the Mad Men episode, which is it's toasted. It's
no throat irritation, no cough. Yeah, oh my god, there
I mean, and they were right, we're right. This is
such a weird Yeah, this and and we're these the
first advertisements of their kind. Yeah, this is really the

(01:01:52):
first guy to start pushing this in a big way.
Like obviously they're in products advertised for women before, but
not like this. No one had thought of taking something
that was a mass product and then specifically gendering it
in order to sell more of them to a specific gender. Um. Yeah,
like Burnet's is the fucking king of that. He's he's

(01:02:13):
the real trailblazer there. He's using his feminism for evil, Yes, exactly.
The Bernet's office sent out a series of suggested menus
to restaurants arranged to save you from the dangers of overreading. Inevitably,
the after dinner menus advised reach for a cigarette instead
of dessert. Burns pushed articles that advised wives to hire
cabinet makers to add in special cigarette holders next to

(01:02:35):
the flower and sugar holders. He sat down with home
ex textbook writers to stress the importance of cigarettes and homemaking.
Just as the young and inexperienced housewife it's caution not
to let her supplies of sugar or salt, or tea
or coffee run low, so should she be advised that
the same holds true of cigarettes. I desperately want a
house with a cigarette holder built into the cabinets. I

(01:02:56):
will start smoking just to be able to use that.
That sounds fucking awesome there, I mean, the way it's
crazy to think of. It's like they're, yeah, like cigarette
used used to be like kind of a given and
like built into it's still kind of like built into
cars and just like became. If you want to know
what it was like, if you want to know what

(01:03:18):
it was like to grow up in the twenties in America,
go take a vacation to Serbia. Because they all still
like you'll you'll have waiters walk to your table with
a plateful of food with a cigarette in their mouths
like it's it's so fucking crazy. They still smoked that
way over there and it's, uh, it's amazing, like it
really yeah, it really takes you back. Um yeah, it's retro, Robert,

(01:03:44):
it's retro and they have a nightmarish rates of cancer.
But I don't think anyone gives a ship. It's Serbia man,
like they've been through worse. But that's the national slogan. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you noticed that the places where like, uh, ship has
gotten real most recently are the places where no one
cares that cigarettes are bad for you, Like everybody smokes

(01:04:05):
in a rack and it's like, why am I going
to give a shit about lung cancer? Have you seen
what's going on here? Yeah? Um, now, Jamie, have you
ever heard the phrase a moment on the lips and
in a lifetime on the hips? You know you've never
heard that? I guess. Okay, So for a couple of
articles I wrote years ago, I spent several weeks in

(01:04:27):
pro anorexia chat rooms just like listening to the conversations
pro anorexi if people would have with each other about
how to be anorexic better, and you run into that
quote all of the fucking time. It is very common
off offline, which is that's good. Yeah, that's good. Yeah,
I did the same. Yeah. I'm glad that I did

(01:04:51):
the same with my eating disorder. Otherwise it would have
been a real problem, um, or more of a real
problem than it was. Uh. Yeah, but a phrase, a
moment on the lips, a lifetime of the hips. That
anthem of anorexia originates from a quote cooked up by
Edward Burnet's. His version, of course, was a moment in
the mouth and ten years on the hips, um, which

(01:05:12):
I guess is less extreme than with the way the quote. Yeah,
a moment in the mouth and ten years on the hips.
It's a good line. It's a good line. Uh. He
got that line published in pieces in the New Yorker
Life and other magazines, right next to cigarette ads. Now
at this moment, in the late nineteen twenties, most of
the resistance to Berne's tactics came from the fact that

(01:05:34):
he was hurting the candy industry, not that he was,
you know, encouraging horrible rates of cancer. Representatives of the
sugar industry in particular were livid, which prompted Burnet's to
respond in a letter that quote, a battle carried on
fairly in this manner can serve the public and presenting
both sides of a discussable question, and in bringing the
underlying democratic principle of free competition fairly to the front,

(01:05:55):
which really that says a lot about capitalism right there.
That he's like, no, we need a fair discussion. Should
you eat a shipload of sugar or should you smoke
cigarettes every ten seconds? That's the question, not like are
both of these things bad? Are you doing either? It's
just like, which is the more profitable right now? Yeah,
which poison will sell better? Is the is the question

(01:06:15):
we need to have a free and open discussion about.
I mean, it is crazy to me that he was
able to convince people that cigarettes are more fun than
eating garbage, because I just contently disagree. Yeah, it's incredible,
Like that is an achievement right there. I like how
cigarettes were like they're like, oh no, this is how
you make friends, Like, oh okay, yeah, this is how

(01:06:36):
you get men to like you ladies smoke a lucky strike.
But December of nine, the first year of Eddie's pro
cigarette campaign, American Tobacco's revenue group by thirty two million dollars,
which thirty two million dollars in nineteen eight money is
equivalent to roughly every dollar in two thousand nineteen money.
Most of that additional sales came, of course, from the

(01:06:58):
increase in sales for Lucky Strikes, so this is almost
all attributable to berne ad campaign. And of course Edward
Burns had no issue in capitalizing off of the woman's
liberation movement to sell cigarettes, since cigarettes smoking came into
vogue right around the same time women got the right
to vote. Bernese tied the two together, running ads suggesting
that emancipated women ought to smoke cigarettes. He took advantage

(01:07:21):
of his famous uncle, hiring the psychoanalyst Dr. A. A. Brill,
who had studied under Sigmund Freud, and paying him to
consult on his ad campaign. Brill wrote quote, It's perfectly
normal for women to want to smoke cigarettes. The emancipation
of women has suppressed many of their feminine desires. More
women now do the same work as men do. Many
women bear no children. Those who do bear children have

(01:07:42):
fewer children. Feminine traits are masked cigarettes, which are equated
with men become torches of freedom. Oh the I it
makes total sense that this works. It makes total sense
that women can do anything that men do, include accidentally
killing them else include include poisoning themselves with tobacco. Yeah,

(01:08:05):
I get it. That's well, you know, you got me.
That's why our great aunts are dead. That line from
Dr Brill Torches of Freedom inspired Edward Burnet's to create
what some people call the first modern pr campaign in history.
That might be overselling a little bit, a little bit,
but it was very influential. Berne's decided that American tobacco

(01:08:27):
should pick out a handful of stylish young ladies with
social cash at you might call influence. Influence. Yeah, yeah,
he's that fucking guy. So he hires these ladies to
show up at the nineteen twenty nine Easter Sunday Parade
in New York and walk around smoking their cigarettes flagrantly
in public as a protest against women's inequality. He's like,

(01:08:49):
we're smoking cigarettes. Yeah, we're smoking cigarettes out on the street.
So his office put out a press release which they
disguised as a message from one of the lady activists
organizing the event, but was of course actually written by
Edward Burnet's and his his colleagues. From the interest in
the interests of equality of the sexes and to fight

(01:09:10):
another sex taboo, I and other young women will light
another torture freedom by smoking cigarettes while strolling on Fifth
Avenue Easter Sunday. We're doing this to combat the silly
prejudice that the cigarette is suitable for the home, the restaurant,
the taxicab, the theater, lovvy, but never, no, never, for
the sidewalk. Women smokers and their escorts will stroll from
stret Street on Fifth Avenue between eleven thirty and one o'clock.

(01:09:34):
So motherfucker is dueling for like pro choice justice psycho. Okay, yeah,
I'm I'm I'm with you. I understand why this Yeah
yeah Now. The event received massive newspaper coverage and was
one of the biggest stories in the country for days,
even though only ten women actually showed up to march.

(01:09:57):
Here's an example of how a local New York paper
covered the it quote, I'm gonna try to do my
best New York old timey journalist accent here, so just
as Miss Frederica Freyling, who housing conspicuous and a tailor
outfit of Dot Gray, pushed her way through the jam.
In front of St. Patrick Smith. Miss Bertha Hunt and
six colleagues struck another blow on behalf of the liberty

(01:10:17):
of women. Down Fifth Avenue, they strolled puffing at cigarettes.
Miss Hunt issued the following community from the smoke clouded battlefield.
I hope that we have started something and that these
torches of freedom, with no particular brand Favid will smash
the discriminatory taboo on cigarettes for women, and that our
sex will go on breaking down all discriminations. Wow good, Yes,
it was beautiful. I'm also imagining all the women that

(01:10:39):
are advertising this being forced to act like sexy babies
in the way that women in an advertising were at
this time and still are, but in a different way
where they're just like, who me smoke a cigarette? Like
they're like the sexy, the freaky sexy baby trope that
I love and wish I could do myself. I think
this was more like the boundary breaking, provocative flapper girl

(01:11:02):
sort of thing. Yeah, abies, well you can have sex
with me. Thet I get the I get the idea
that they were more uh, acting like um, you know,
like the stereotype of like the feminist college student in
that earliest episode of The Simpsons where where Homer grabs

(01:11:23):
the candy off that lady. I think they're acting more
like that. Um. But that's just the impression I get from,
like the quotes in the newspapers and stuff. I don't
know what voice they said them in. They were all dressed.
Yeah they're the flapper, I mean, yeah, the flapper and
the cigarette are very intwined. So Eddie's secretary, Bertha was

(01:11:46):
one of the marchers and the Tortures of Freedom rally.
She gave quotes to numerous newspapers and told the New
York Evening World that she first got the idea for
this campaign when a man with her in the street
asked her to extinguish your cigarette, as it embarrassed him.
I talked it over with my friends and we just
it it was high time something was done about the situation.
Bertha denied being associated with any ad firm or agency

(01:12:06):
and interviews, which was of course patently false because she
worked her directly for Edward Burnet's The Torches of Freedom
campaign was an influential moment in pr history. Berne's would,
in true fashion, go on to massively oversell the impact
it had on national smoking habits. Later academic work suggests
that it alone was not responsible for making women feel
okay with smoking cigarettes, But it's pretty much beyond debate

(01:12:29):
to say that Berne's overall impact on the tobacco industry
was enormous and groundbreaking. Before Edward Burnet's, woman who smoked
were seen as horrors, trollops, and criminals. After Edward, fucking
everybody smoked. Observing the change he had wrought. Later in life,
Edward wrote, age old customs I learned could be broken
down by a dramatic appeal disseminated by a network of
the media, which is true. Uh, it's hard to quantify

(01:12:53):
the exact cost in public health of Berne's tobacco marketing innovation.
I found a article in the British Medical Journal that
credited Burnet's with a formative role in marketing tobacco with
two women and noted quote. The World Health Organization estimates
that the number of women smoking will trip almost triple
over the next generation to more than five million. World
Health Organization. Of these, more than two million will die

(01:13:15):
prematurely from smoking related diseases, so sizeable body count that
he's a part of here. So how are you feeling
about the feminist icon label at this point? Definitely a
feminist icon, but I think we can agree that icon
is not an inherently positive term. Definitely had an impact
on the lives of women, that's my spin. Very impactful

(01:13:38):
in women's history. I gotta say, to be fair, contributing
to two hundred million smoking deaths via marketing would not
necessarily make Bernet's a bastard, because you have to consider
someone's actions based on what they and the medical community
knew about cigarettes at the time. Like if I sell
my listeners belts and then twenty years later scientists realized
that belts cause aggressive waste cancer, I can't be blamed

(01:14:01):
for that. But if Sophie had handed me right before
reading that ad pieces of a study that suggested that
belts might cause aggressive waste cancer, and then I covered
that study up, then I would be a bastard. So
this leads me to the question, what precisely did Eddie
Burns know about the health consequences of smoking in the

(01:14:23):
twenties and thirties. Well, for one thing, it's worth knoking,
noting that, unlike Don Draper, Edward Burns did not smoke
tobacco himself. He hated the taste and ironically preferred chocolates. Now,
first off, this guy's yet not comfortable smoking himself. For
another thing, Edward Burns had to bribe medical experts to

(01:14:44):
brag about the supposed health benefits of smoking. It was
obvious even to people in the twenties that cigarettes were
bad for your throat. People got smokers coughs then, as
they do now. To combat this obvious fact of reality,
Burne's created the Tobacco Society for Voice Culture, whose goal
was to improve the cords of the throat through cigarette smoking,
that the public will be able to express itself in
songs of praise or more easily to swallow anything. Society's

(01:15:09):
ultimate goal was to provide what they called a smoking
teacher for every singer. Now, you could argue that Burns
didn't have much data on the health effect of cigarettes,
but again, it was obvious to people that you know,
cigarettes had harmful effects on your throat, and Burnet spent
a lot of his career finding ways to get people
to deny this evidence of their senses. One way he

(01:15:29):
did this was by finding ways he could market specific
products in a way that seemed to encourage public health.
When he was hired by Cremo Cigars to improve their image,
he suggested they launch an anti spitting campaign and basically
focus on improving hygiene through stopping people from spitting to
kind of cover up the fact that cigarettes are obviously
bad for your health. Uh. By the early nineteen thirties,

(01:15:49):
a scientific study revealed that a rabbit exposed to tobacco
for three years had developed a carcinoma. The studies stated
for the first time that tobacco had cancer producing properties. Now,
this is an in nineteen thirties, about sixty years before
this information is common knowledge and the few people how
long has he been pushing cigarettes or is this pre
him pushing cigarettes? Oh, this is while he's pushing cigarettes

(01:16:12):
in the middle of it. He starts pushing cigarettes in
the late twenties. But this isn't like he becomes aware
of this data in the middle of his time in
the tobacco industry. And in May of nineteen thirty three,
he attached an abstract of the study to a letter
he's sent to one of American Tobacco's executives. He wrote,
as you will see, certain of the material in these
articles is unfavorable to tobacco. However, I do not feel

(01:16:32):
that there is anything immediate to be done. I do
feel that serious attention should be given to the problem
of having ready a strong offensive in case the press
should give prominence to the recurring articles which I note
from time to time on the relationship of smoking in carcinoma.
I believe that the American Tobacco Company and the tobacco
interests generally should be fully prepared with authentic information if,
as when the need for such information occurs. So Edward

(01:16:54):
Burnet's knows that cigarettes are associated with cancer, and his
first step when he becomes aware of that is to
send warning to the company hiring him that they should
have a counter offensive ready in case newspapers pick up
the story. Okay, so he's fully yeah, he's he's fully
a bastard. And further evidence of that is that he

(01:17:15):
was deeply concerned about the health impact smoking would have
on his wife, Doris. She was a pack a day smoker,
and Eddie needled her about her habit until she quit.
Their oldest daughter, Doris later recalled to author Larry Tye,
he used to hide my mother's cigarettes and make us
hide the cigarettes. He didn't think they were good for mother.
His daughter Anne added, he'd pulled them all out and
just snap them like bones, just snap them in half

(01:17:37):
and throw them in the toilet. He hated her smoking.
So Edward Burne's while he is getting America hooked on cigarettes,
is committed to stopping his wife from smoking because he
knows they're going to kill her and he loves his wife. Okay,
so yeah, this, I mean, this is like basic Game
of Thrones logic of just like if the person is
not willing to drink their own wine, do not purchase

(01:18:01):
that wine, you goofs it's poison. M h, All right,
well he's bad. Just started watching Game of Thrones, didn't you, Jamie.
I started watching the Throne game? You did? You did
watch the Throne Games? And now I'm smart. It's true. Yep, yep, yep, yep.
It's a good show. It's fine. I like, uh, I
like the guy who says the things. Yeah anyway, so yeah,

(01:18:25):
that's that's part one of our story. Oh yeah, the
guy with the hair is hot as hell. Ye, I
mean Jamie Lanister. Oh boy, let's let's just say I
would like that torture freedom. That doesn't really actually tie
into the context of how that was used. But no,
you'd you'd set him one fire. It's set him on fire.

(01:18:49):
That's what I do. That's how I flirt fire. Yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. So uh that's part one. I think we
should all be clear on Eddie Burnet's is a bastard. Now,
he had America hooked on cigarettes after he knew that
they were killing people. So there we go. How do
you feel after this, after this episode about our unheralded
founding father, Edward Burns, he seems more complicated than your

(01:19:13):
average bastard. He is. He is. I hate when the
bastard to do something good every once in a while.
It makes my life harder. Yeah, rationalize, he's really complicated.
He's not your hitler or your saddam um. Yeah, because
he does do some good stuff he has He clearly
has some good impulses behind him too. But also he

(01:19:36):
also gets people hooked on cigarettes when you know it's
going to call give him cancer classically cartoon villain. Yeah,
this is He's a challenging one. I'm I'm stressed out
by this. Well, you're going to be even more stressed
out in part two because in part two we're going
to talk about how Edward Burnet's popularized bacon inspired the
Nazis and helped launch a brutal forty years civil war

(01:19:58):
in Guatemala. So okay, great, quite a career this fellow had.
Why did he live so long? Why he lived for
fucking ever? Yeah? He really would not die. It's like
your wife dies in nineteen eighty take the hint, Eddie,

(01:20:19):
but no hints or not something Edward Burnet's takes. I
wish he had smoked. Yeah, so do I. Well, Jamie,
do you have any plug able to plug? Ah? Yeah,
let me plug e uh, let's see. You can listen
to the Bechdel Cast, my podcast with Caitlin Dronte every Thursday.
You can. You can follow me on Twitter at Jamie

(01:20:43):
Loft's Help, or if you live in the UK, I'll
be at Edinburgh Fringe Festival all August and you can
find me on Twitter at I right. Okay. You can
find this podcast on the internet find the best roots
dot com. Well, we'll have all of these sources for
this episode, including the what of the book The Father
of Spin, which is a really good and balanced look
at Rene's although he comes to a bit more positive

(01:21:05):
of a conclusion on the guy than than we are
in this episode. Um and you can find us on
Twitter and Instagram at at Bastards Pod. You can buy
t shirts at the public behind the Bastards. You can
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(01:21:29):
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