The Journalist and the Pitchman
Things really are different in Canada, at least when it comes to choosing spokesmen for high-end haberdashers like Harry Rosen. The journalist in the advertisement is Malcolm Gladwell, of The New Yorker and Tipping Point fame. (He donated his fee to charity.) While it’s easy to make fun of Gladwell’s unruly hair, having a visual trademark can be a useful thing for a would-be writer-celebrity.
It’s a philosophy embedded in the Western mind-set, a theory essential to the American dream. Popular culture and history books have long stressed the importance of individual initiative and inherent skill in achieving success. Indeed,