American Notes CAMPAIGNS

"I want you to be somebody, and you can if you try . . . Pick up that phone and call now!" So exhorted the smiling face in the newspaper ad for a nationwide chain of vocational schools. Rarely has such an ordinary pitch received so much attention, but then this was no ordinary pitchman: it was Presidential Hopeful Jesse Jackson. The message, self-improvement through education, was vintage Jackson. The medium was a blitz of commercial advertisements for which Jackson was to receive an undisclosed payment.

No sooner had the first of the advertisements run in the New York Daily News than Jackson found himself in the midst of a controversy. He may be the only candidate for the White House to have appeared in paid commercials for a private business. By week's end Jackson conceded that no matter how much the message was like that of his own Operation Push, it was time for Operation Pull Out, and he dropped the commercials.