More Truth in Advertising

Advertising is a world halfway be tween Disney and Dante. White Knights gallop through suburbia, housewives are absolved for ring around the collar, and stars and cowboys blissfully pull on their weeds, oblivious to the Surgeon Gener al's little memento mori in the corner --"dangerous to your health." The Fed eral Trade Commission, which has long labored to deflate the more extravagant pitches, last week published proposed guidelines to ensure that any celebrity shilling a product actually uses the thing if he or she claims to do so.

Everyone immediately thought of Joe Namath and his ad for Beauty Mist pantyhose, as if the guidelines would require him to wear them for at least one game a month. Not so. For Namath, of course, does not claim to use them but only, by implication, to admire them.

Broadway Joe does use the Hamilton-Beach popcorn popper, the La-Z-Boy reclining chair, the Arrow shirts and other items that he conspicuously consumes on television.

The TV and radio networks, in fact, require that celebrities have at least some allegiance to the products that they claim to enjoy. So have many ad agen cies. Jerry Delia Femina, who handles the Teacher's Scotch account, dealt pragmatically with the problem. When Groucho Marx, Jimmy Breslin, Mel Brooks, Tommy Smothers, et al, agreed to appear in Teacher's ads, his agency started sending them two cases of Scotch a month. And it takes no suspension of disbelief to credit Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle with downing a great deal of Lite Beer.

The real question is: Does anyone care? The hype of advertising works on such a different plane from conventional truth that it is a form of American Dada.

It is edifying, perhaps, but hardly nec essary that it be literally honest.

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