When Hate Goes Mainstream, Artists Must go to War: Why this line does/doesn’t work and why we’re using it
Quick background. I was a copywriter at a Madison Avenue advertising agency in midtown Manhattan. The address was technically on Park Avenue so, not exactly “Mad Ave,” but a New York ad agency nonetheless. I loved writing headlines with cool turn of phrases, puns, twists of meaning, sometimes rooted in the temperature of the cultural moment and other times something more timeless. I learned early on from Bill Lane, a copywriter and partner at the agency I worked for that a headline can raise questions, it can be twisty or provoking or even perplexing, but your first line of body copy, that one must be Baccarat crystal clear or your headline risks dangling defenseless in misunderstanding. There is no recovery from that.
My wife, collaborator and partner on A Cow in the Sky, C. Fraser Press, is my favorite writer. She can pretty much write anything from screenplays to stand-up and even headlines.
