Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...
I know it happens every year, and every year it happens I swear it gets worse. I refer to the politicization of the Super Bowl.
From the left you have the New York Times.
"No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials.
More than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated, cartoonlike vein that was intended to be humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous."
This is news to the Times? Ads (and programming) have been that way for at least 20 years! Groups like Focus on the Family has long been decrying the "cruel or callous" nature of TV and advertising in the last several decades!
"For instance, in a commercial for Bud Light beer, sold by Anheuser-Busch, one man beat the other at a game of rock, paper, scissors by throwing a rock at his opponent’s head.
In another Bud Light spot, face-slapping replaced fist-bumping as the cool way for people to show affection for one another. In a FedEx commercial, set on the moon, an astronaut was wiped out by a meteor. In a spot for Snickers candy, sold by Mars, two co-workers sought to prove their masculinity by tearing off patches of chest hair."
Ripping off chest hair??? Yeah that's brutal...
"There was also a bank robbery (E*Trade Financial), fierce battles among office workers trapped in a jungle (CareerBuilder), menacing hitchhikers (Bud Light again) and a clash between a monster and a superhero reminiscent of a horror movie (Garmin)."
Have you never felt like your bank was "ripping you off"...nickling and diming you with service charges and fees? And the Garmin ad.....that was a classic Godzilla film! I thought the premise was great - the execution left much to be desired though....
"Then, too, there was the unfortunate homonym at the heart of a commercial from Prudential Financial, titled “What Can a Rock Do?”
The problem with the spot, created internally at Prudential, was that whenever the announcer said, “a rock” — invoking the Prudential logo, the rock of Gibraltar — it sounded as if he were saying, yes, “Iraq.”
To be sure, sometimes “a rock” is just “a rock,” and someone who has watched the Super Bowl XIX years in a row only for the commercials may be inferring things that Madison Avenue never meant to imply."
OHMYGAWD....is that all you people (at the Times) can think about? Iraq and how to dig at the President. You would have to have been living under a rock (or is it under Iraq - hey 2 can play at this game) to not know "own a piece of the Rock". It is an advertising classic and any business writer who confuses A rock with Iraq needs a new hearing aid and a new profession!
That is not to say that the sports induced insanity was left solely to our friends on the political left. Laura Ingraham devoted a large portion of her first hour today going off about the shape of Prince's "symbol" guitar. Apparently to Laura (and many of her listeners) the shape of the "symbol" guitar, when backlit in silouhette on a fluttering sheet, is slighly phallic! Anyone who has followed Prince's career (and if you live in the Cities and you haven't you are a musical heretic!) knows the whole "symbol" saga and how Prince, in a stroke of artistic genius (he has had many) used that symbol to turn a management dispute into a complete and total artistic remake - making millions in the process. To get all wound up about whether the stylized neck of a guitar could be deemed phallic is - well silly! I mean it was meant to be a little phallic - a double entendre if you will...but with everything else that is going on - Senate debates on worthless non-binding war resolutions, a 3 trillion dollar budget, border security etc - do we really need to waste all that time speculating the symbolization of Symbolina's guitar? I mean really, if you are worried about "suggestive" did you see the end of the Garmin ad? That ray that he shoots out of his "belt buckle"...
Let's get real, shall we?
From the left you have the New York Times.
"No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials.
More than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated, cartoonlike vein that was intended to be humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous."
This is news to the Times? Ads (and programming) have been that way for at least 20 years! Groups like Focus on the Family has long been decrying the "cruel or callous" nature of TV and advertising in the last several decades!
"For instance, in a commercial for Bud Light beer, sold by Anheuser-Busch, one man beat the other at a game of rock, paper, scissors by throwing a rock at his opponent’s head.
In another Bud Light spot, face-slapping replaced fist-bumping as the cool way for people to show affection for one another. In a FedEx commercial, set on the moon, an astronaut was wiped out by a meteor. In a spot for Snickers candy, sold by Mars, two co-workers sought to prove their masculinity by tearing off patches of chest hair."
Ripping off chest hair??? Yeah that's brutal...
"There was also a bank robbery (E*Trade Financial), fierce battles among office workers trapped in a jungle (CareerBuilder), menacing hitchhikers (Bud Light again) and a clash between a monster and a superhero reminiscent of a horror movie (Garmin)."
Have you never felt like your bank was "ripping you off"...nickling and diming you with service charges and fees? And the Garmin ad.....that was a classic Godzilla film! I thought the premise was great - the execution left much to be desired though....
"Then, too, there was the unfortunate homonym at the heart of a commercial from Prudential Financial, titled “What Can a Rock Do?”
The problem with the spot, created internally at Prudential, was that whenever the announcer said, “a rock” — invoking the Prudential logo, the rock of Gibraltar — it sounded as if he were saying, yes, “Iraq.”
To be sure, sometimes “a rock” is just “a rock,” and someone who has watched the Super Bowl XIX years in a row only for the commercials may be inferring things that Madison Avenue never meant to imply."
OHMYGAWD....is that all you people (at the Times) can think about? Iraq and how to dig at the President. You would have to have been living under a rock (or is it under Iraq - hey 2 can play at this game) to not know "own a piece of the Rock". It is an advertising classic and any business writer who confuses A rock with Iraq needs a new hearing aid and a new profession!
That is not to say that the sports induced insanity was left solely to our friends on the political left. Laura Ingraham devoted a large portion of her first hour today going off about the shape of Prince's "symbol" guitar. Apparently to Laura (and many of her listeners) the shape of the "symbol" guitar, when backlit in silouhette on a fluttering sheet, is slighly phallic! Anyone who has followed Prince's career (and if you live in the Cities and you haven't you are a musical heretic!) knows the whole "symbol" saga and how Prince, in a stroke of artistic genius (he has had many) used that symbol to turn a management dispute into a complete and total artistic remake - making millions in the process. To get all wound up about whether the stylized neck of a guitar could be deemed phallic is - well silly! I mean it was meant to be a little phallic - a double entendre if you will...but with everything else that is going on - Senate debates on worthless non-binding war resolutions, a 3 trillion dollar budget, border security etc - do we really need to waste all that time speculating the symbolization of Symbolina's guitar? I mean really, if you are worried about "suggestive" did you see the end of the Garmin ad? That ray that he shoots out of his "belt buckle"...
Let's get real, shall we?
posted by The Lady Logician at
4:05 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home