Compared to the news media and most political discourse, we're whiter than white and cleaner than clean - and that's from a source we can trust.
Hugh Mackay is Australia's most respected social researcher. His Ipsos Mackay Report, published by Ipsos Australia, has just unearthed some new evidence concerning community attitudes to advertising. It seems consumer scepticism about advertising is nothing when compared with scepticism about far more serious matters.
Advertising, says Mackay, is benefiting from a general decline in respect for news coverage and political rhetoric, the preamble to the invasion of Iraq being one shining example.
Said one of Mackay's middle-aged respondents about advertising: "It's not exactly rocket science, is it? They're just trying to sell you their products. It's not like some of those current affairs programmes, where you don't know whether you're getting propaganda or someone's political bullshit."
Advertising has no secret agenda. Its purpose is now clearly perceived: it is there to sell something. Mackay argues: "No matter how slickly presented the message may be, the commercial advertiser's intentions are self-evident.
We might like or dislike the product, or the advertising, but we cannot realistically complain of being deceived or manipulated ..." (And, as Mackay reminds us, the advent of the remote control has transformed the viewing experience anyhow. "If any ads threaten to irritate, offend or patronise us, we simply won't give them space in our minds. Flick! and they're gone.")
The idea of a TV commercial on the evening news being perceived as an oasis of truth might take some getting used to. But as Mackay explains: "Contrary to popular myth, advertising does not work by firing magic bullets of desire into our brains, forcing us to buy things against our will.
Because we are psychologically equipped to resist messages that challenge our attitudes, advertising is least effective when it sets out to change our minds. It is most effective when it preaches to the converted."
I've quoted Mackay's "cage metaphor" in my books: it explains perfectly how advertising communicates. The consumer builds an invisible cage around himself, the bars of which are made up of his beliefs and experiences.
The bars become filters for incoming messages. Advertising works by reinforcing, not challenging, his attitudes, values and dispositions.
Mackay pinpoints a second reason why advertising is benefiting from the current media environment: it offers good news at a time when so much other news is bad or disturbing. When events seem beyond our control, advertising addresses the things we can control - what to eat or drink, what car to drive, where to shop, what to wear.
Mackay says that the critics of advertising have often imbued it with more significance than is warranted. "Advertising is capitalism's servant, not its architect. Of course it will always attract criticism because we don't always admire what we see in the mirror it holds up to society. Its very existence reminds us that we are sometimes greedy, selfish, competitive and materialistic."
As Mackay observes, how ironic that it took an over-hyped war and fresh doubts about the integrity of our politicians to help us get advertising into perspective. "It may be an even bigger conceptual leap for the industry than it has been for the consumer."