King’s words turned upside down

William Bernbach, a titan of Madison Avenue who died in 1982, said, “If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic.”

The spinmeisters for Ram trucks must have taken Bernbach’s admonition to heart. With a Super Bowl commercial on Sunday that used as its soundtrack a sermon delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. 50 years earlier to the day, they got the notice they wanted. Much of the reaction, though, amounted to a richly deserved thumbs-down.

The sermon was King’s “Drum Major Instinct” speech, given in Atlanta in 1968 two months before his assassination. Everybody, he said, had this instinct — “a desire to be out front, a desire to lead the parade, a desire to be first.” But it had to be harnessed, he said as he went on to equate greatness with service to others.

Ostensibly, the Ram commercial was an appeal for people to serve. But who’s kidding whom? The goal was to sell trucks, with King’s voice as pitchman.

The sheer crassness led to instant condemnation on social media, including speculation about what might be next. Critics were hardly mollified by word that Ram had the blessing of King’s estate. The estate has not always been his staunchest guardian against posthumous commercialization.

It might serve history a tad more faithfully to note other appeals that King made in that Feb. 4, 1968, sermon.

For one thing, he was appalled by the way many people went into hock to buy vehicles they couldn’t possibly afford: “So often, haven’t you seen people making $5,000 a year and driving a car that cost $6,000? And they wonder why their ends never meet.” He also didn’t think highly of advertising gurus — “you know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion.” He continued: “They have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. ... In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. … And you know, before you know it, you’re just buying that stuff.”

For that matter, King might well have been talking about a president a halfcentury in the future when he expounded on the need to rein in the drum-major instinct, for otherwise it becomes “very dangerous” and “pernicious.”

“Have you ever heard people that, you know — and I’m sure you’ve met them — that really become sickening because they just sit up all the time talking about themselves?” he said. “And they just boast and boast and boast. And that’s the person who has not harnessed the drum-major instinct.” King said that he thought about his own death and funeral.

It led to these ringing words: “If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.”

He did not ask to be a huckster for a line of trucks.

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