Publicity has another important social function. The fact that this function has not been planned as a purpose by those who make and use publicity in no way lessens its significance. Publicity turns consumption into a substitute for democracy. Publicity helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic within society. And it also masks what is happening in the rest of the world.
Publicity adds up to a kind of philosophical system.
It explains everything in its own terms. It interprets the world. The entire world becomes a setting for the fulfillment of publicity s promise of the good life. The world smiles at us. It offers itself to us.