Life — November 1933 — page 5: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis This page is primarily a **Pabst Blue Ribbon beer advertisement** (right side), with an unrelated poem on the left titled "Dead Certain" by Berton Braley. The ad features a photograph of an older man and younger woman examining playing cards, accompanying text claiming that when "both the public and the experts agree," Pabst Blue Ribbon is definitively "the best of the better beers." The poem satirizes statisticians and actuaries—professionals who deal in data, prophecies, and calculations—arguing that only actuaries truly "know" facts about existence, mortality rates, and probabilities. The satire mocks their pretension to absolute knowledge. There is no political cartoon on this page; it's primarily advertising copy using rhetorical appeals to authority and consensus.