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Barry Cowsill was seething with fury in a New York record store, listening to two boys his own age making comments about the Cowsill family, unaware that an interested party was standing just a few feet away.
"Well, that's nothing new to me," the other boy replied, "Even the covers they put on their decoys portray them as a bunch of idiots. They're supposed to be good, honest, and spontaneous kids. They must necessarily be a bunch of the worst kind of hypocrites."
"Damn," Barry thought, holding his breath. "How I'd love to show these idiots what kind of hypocrite a Cowsill is." Fortunately, he only thought about it and didn't do anything violent, controlling his bad temper. Even Barry might not be satisfied with the image projected to the public, so he might protest against that very image, just because others might not like it either. The truth is, Barry didn't even have the right to feel upset by the comments he'd heard. The saccharine image the public has of the Cowsill family is precisely the one that was "sold" to the public through advertising. People still think the same, even though Barry doesn't like it one bit.
Barry isn't happy being seen as a clean, well-intentioned, genuine, and pious "good boy." And that doesn't sit well with any of the many Cowsills. The public that supports them has accepted this image, and now it's a problem for the whole family. What can they do? How can they reveal the truth about themselves?
People are used to putting a name and brand on everything they want to recognize. It doesn't matter if it's a suit of clothing or a group of singers. Regarding certain types of merchandise, the labels they're given are misleading. At the very least, they tell only part of the truth, but not the whole truth.
"All those things people say about us make us seem like we're not even human," John told us when the problem was explained to him. "I'd like to find a way to tell the world that we're not different, but on the contrary, the most human, common, and ordinary people they've ever seen."
"Well, they would have to believe it." (Ed. Note: I can't see the rest of this article.)
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