KEYWORDS: people, publicity, thing, bad

No Such Thing as Bad Publicity

David Berg

6/85 DO 2217

1. YOU DON'T SEE FULL-PAGE NEWS ARTICLES & SENSATIONALISM IN THE NEWSPAPERS ABOUT ANY OF THE MAJOR DENOMINATIONS, MUCH LESS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH! There's not anything sensational going on! What are they doing to attract attention?—Nothing! They're dead as a doornail & they're not doing anything to speak of except the same old stuff‚ building more buildings & all that junk! We're the ones that are making the news! Good or bad, at least we're making news, praise God! And it's only bad because of the way they interpret it & the lies they tell about us. But at least they're talking about us.

2. AS SOMEBODY SAID, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS BAD PUBLICITY! The actors' agents & book agents & movie agents are well aware of that. They say the best thing in the World for any book or movie is to get it banned by some court or some country‚ & then it will really sell & really be seen & really go over, because everybody wants to read & see it then! If it's that bad, it's that naughty, it's that wicked, that nasty, they want to read it‚ they want to see it! So they just hope it gets banned some place.

3. NOBODY WOULD EVER HAVE PAID ANY ATTENTION TO SOME OF THESE BOOKS OR MAGAZINES OR MOVIES IF THEY HADN'T RAISED A BIG FUROR! Their enemies‚ who are usually a little tiny handful, a minority‚ raise this big furor about it, but if they didn't want people to read that book or see that movie, they shouldn't have said a word, they should have kept their mouths shut & the thing would have stunk itself to death without any furor or big notoriety. But they must want people to know about it & they must want more people to read it or see it, because they publicise it.

4. AND ALL THIS BAD PUBLICITY ABOUT US JUST MAKES THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE MORE CURIOUS ABOUT US! In fact‚ a lot of the things they think are bad about us & say about us & condemn us for, right away pricks up the ears of the World & the sinners & the people we're trying to reach! "Wow, it sounds good to me! Especially if it sounds bad to the church‚ it must be good!"

5. SO AS THE ADVERTISING AGENCIES HAVE SAID, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS BAD PUBLICITY! It may sound bad to some people, but there are a lot of other people, & the vast majority of the people are not church people‚ are not goody-good people, are not self-righteous, hypocritical‚ moralistic people. Our kind of freedom sounds good to them!—Like the cartoon they put in the paper in Tenerife, the German tourist arrives there in his shorts & says, "Where can I find'm?" We had a lot of people coming down there looking for us, guys wanted to find us, find all these pretty girls & what club we went to & where they could go dancing with them etc.

6. AS FAR AS THEY WERE CONCERNED, THE WORSE & THE SEXIER THE PUBLICITY WAS‚ THE BETTER IT SOUNDED TO THEM! It only sounds worse or bad to the self-righteous hypocritical churchy leadership of the World. So they came down looking for us, to not do us damage but to enjoy us! And we had quite a ministry going, a real genuine witnessing ministry, as well as a real loving ministry to witness to them.