Shilling For Dollars

I've been seeing these Hyundai commercials a lot recently. In an effort to make buying a new car look like a shrewd financial move, Hyundai has recruited three authors of personal finance books to appear in commercial spots and dispense nuggets of financial wisdom along with a hearty side of condescension. I don't see how these commercials help Hyundai or the authors. These guys may all be best selling authors, but they aren't bringing any star power to Hyundai. In each spot, the writers have to be introduced by the customer blurting out an utterly ridiculous line, such as "Adam Smith? Best selling author of The Money Game?" in order for the viewers to know who they are. The writers may drum up some extra sales for their books by appearing on TV, but they are doing so at the cost of turning themselves into shills for Hyundai. The conflict of interest doesn't rise to the level of a Ford ad campaign I saw a few years ago that featured an automotive writer whose name I forget gushing over the new Ford Freestar, but I think it's still a conflict of interest. Cars are one of the biggest purchases that people make and nearly every personal finance book that I've read has spent some time discussing common financial mistakes that people make when buying cars and how to avoid them. As if all of this wasn't enough, the authors come off like a bunch of know-it-all jerks in these commercials. Adam Smith's "Which one of us is a Rhodes Scholar" retort is especially nauseating. If you're like me and found it a little bit too suspicious that there's a financial writer named Adam Smith, I can save you a trip to Wikipedia by confirming that it is a pseudonym. His real name is George Goodman.

The Wealth of Nations

The guest on Wednesday's Daily Show episode that I commented on yesterday was satirist P.J. O'Rourke. He was talking about his new book, On the Wealth of Nations, which is part of a series called books that changed the world. The series features well-known authors who read famous books and then write about them. As you can probably guess, the famous book that O'Rourke wrote about was Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. I picked up The Wealth of Nations a couple months ago, but I was unable to get very far. The first problem was the edition that I picked up (Penguin Classics) had a 82 page introduction. No one who feels the need to write an 82 page introduction to any book (Andrew Skinner, in this case) should be in the business of writing introductions. I tried to slog my way through the intro because I was worried that I might find Smith's 230+ year old prose a little bit obtuse, but the actual book is an absolute page turner compared to the intro. Once I started getting into the book and the sheer joy of not trying to read my way through the introduction wore off, it began to get a little bit dry and pedantic, so I decided to cut my losses after about 60 pages. I don't know if I'll be reading O'Rourke's book, but it I don't see myself picking up The Wealth of Nations again anytime soon.