Different Wings, Same Pterodactyl – Walter Jameson
April 30, 2026
I was in my bedroom watching Collector’s Showcase on MeTV. It was a Sunday in April and the light coming through the window had that soft, diffused look that made everything feel quieter, almost chapel-like. Lisa Whelchel held up a newspaper page used in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, talking about where it came from, who handled it, how it managed to still exist when my wife called me to the window. She called my attention to two mourning doves sitting on the metal eaves. Just sitting there, close to each other, not doing much of anything.
I told her they were probably mating. She said maybe. I said we’re no better than they are—except we watch Collector’s Showcase. I don’t watch the news anymore. It makes me ill.
I’m not the first to notice the news is full of shit. I just kept watching it because that’s what I grew up with. When Walter Cronkite spoke, you believed him. Same with Murrow, Sevareid, Huntley and Brinkley, Reasoner. I stopped watching for a while. I was tag-teaming raising a family and didn’t have time for the news that didn’t involve natural disasters, national emergencies, or the New York Jets. When I came back, everything had shifted. Not gradually, not in a way you could track, just suddenly everything sounded the same.
TV, phone, laptop, it didn’t matter where you went, it was already decided. Fox, CNN, MSNBC, whatever name was on it, it didn’t matter, it was one voice moving through different faces, like it figured out it didn’t need the person anymore. Take your news, swallow your Xanax, go to sleep.
5:45 p.m., on any given day:
Channel 2: “Our top story, a man dressed as a Big Arch hamburger was caught climbing the White House flagpole—”
Click.
Channel 4: “Our top story, a man dressed as a Big Arch hamburger was caught climbing the White House flagpole—”
Click.
Channel 7: “Our top story, a man dressed as a Big Arch hamburger was caught climbing the White House flagpole—”
You didn’t even wait for the rest. There is no rest. That’s the story. That’s what you’re getting that night. An unnaturally white smile and cut to a station break. And I’m sitting there with the remote thinking maybe the next channel’s going to slip up, say something out of order, laugh, admit it sounds ridiculous, but they don’t, they can’t, they’re all locked into the same cadence, the same pause before “White House,” like it was practiced somewhere, rubber-stamped, and it doesn’t matter who you think is responsible—it’s the same machine circling overhead with T-Rex arms, too short to reach anything honestly—still grabbing, still stuffing whatever they can into their pockets.
Different wings, same pterodactyl.
I got into advertising because I loved commercials. My mother would sit me down in front of the TV and I’d stay there for hours, and I liked the shows, but I paid attention when the commercials came on. They felt sharper, funnier, more alive than whatever they were interrupting. They made things feel necessary. That’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t care if it was laundry detergent or peanut butter.
At first it all made sense. I worked on a car rental account. They charged more than anyone else, but the cars were clean, new, reliable—you paid for something you could see. Even the little scams, the fuel charges, the upgrades, you knew what was happening.
But I also pushed potato chips engineered so you don’t stop eating them. Beer that barely tasted like beer but moves because of a line, or a sound that gets stuck in your head.
I was part of it—not quite a T-Rex—more like a brontosaurus with a bad attitude.
I ended up in pharma advertising. I thought I was going to help people. Holy fuck.
The briefings weren’t briefings—they were healing sessions in a large, stained tent. You’d sit there while someone clicked through slides, people walking through fields, smiling, wind in their hair, talking about getting your life back, and nobody said what the drug actually did. They’d hedge everything, may help, can reduce, shown to improve, all of it carefully worded so nobody could be pinned down on anything. Patients, they’d say, always patients, like that word made you forget they were people.
There was this low feeling in the room that something wasn’t right, but nobody was going to say it out loud. I tried to look engaged—writing things down I already knew I wasn’t going to use, when what I really wanted to do was drive the pen into my hands.
Then you’d see the spot. Sixty seconds. Half of it taken up by warnings. Not suggestions, warnings. Bleeding, swelling, liver problems, heart issues, all of it read out while two people walk down a beach like nothing’s wrong. That part isn’t optional. That part has to be there. My favorite was a commercial showing an elderly couple picking out spinach at a farmer’s market while the announcer warned us that “sudden death may occur.”
We used to sell potato chips that made you eat the whole can. Now we sell treatments that need clearance from entire law firms to get it on air.
I should have picked up on it earlier, before I got into any of it. I was waiting tables then, working with a group of guys who came over from Egypt. They were good guys, funny, generous, always talking, they taught me bits of Arabic I still remember.
There was one guy who didn’t fit in with the rest. Early 30s, didn’t smile much, thick hair that always looked like it had a mind of its own. He had a way of looking at you like he knew something you didn’t.
One day I’m carrying over a pita stuffed with tuna and raisins and he stops me and says, completely straight, “I understand you’re in the business of propaganda.”
It hit me the wrong way. I stopped. I felt accused.
“No,” I said, “I’m in advertising.”
He just looked at me, like he didn’t understand the difference I was making, and then he nodded and walked away.
At the time I thought there was a difference. Advertising was creativity, persuasion. Propaganda? That was something done by governments or regimes.
He saw it right away. It took me years.
He had a degree in chemical engineering. In America, he was bussing tables.
I put the commercial on mute and walked back to the window.