A Smile a Day...Keeps the Doctor Away?

Just like apples, smiles can also keep your visits to the doctor to a minimum. A happy life is a healthy life, and spreading that happiness to fellow citizens helps everyone to live healthier lives.

But let's be serious. No matter how happy someone is, they are sometimes struck by headaches, colds, or worse, the flu. Have you ever thought about the rhetoric of medicine labels? Neither had I, until I was stumped while composing this very blog post only to have my bottle of Zyrtec glaring at me from my desktop. Zyrtec has printed about 300 words on its tiny label, informing consumers of its active ingredient, uses, warnings, directions, and "other" information. It seems as if drug producers only provide the minimum amount of information in the simplest form possible. What if all forms of communication were like that? I think humans would become quite robotic within colloquial conversation. Even further, imagine President Obama giving a political address in medicine label format:

Active Ingredient: Immigration law reform
Purpose: Protection
Uses: Relieves danger from overflow of foreigners, provides citizens with more jobs, protects citizens by the border
Warnings: Do not use if an illegal immigrant planning on staying in US
Directions: Illegal immigrants must take responsibility in addition to our government and businesses
Other Information: Don't dispute the betterment of our US citizenry at the expense of illegal immigrants
Inactive ingredients: effort, planning, enforcement, conflict.
Questions?

This type of address would cause unprecedented questioning and outrage by all inhabitants of the US due to vaguely ambiguous delivery. I guess I see why politics uses rhetoric the way it does, but wouldn't it be interesting to view the actual reaction of our citizenry to any important rhetorical situation in medicine label format?