No kidding. This is the sign on the church near my house that I drive by each morning. What do you suppose Jesus thinks about a 1970's beer commercial being used so flippantly? Dunno.
At any rate, it feels like there are so many things to say of late that I never know where to start. So I'll begin with television commercials. Some day, someone will have to explain to me the point of election ads. If they are all hyperbole, and they are always put side by side (that is, pro-con-pro-con, etc.) then what do they achieve? One ad says McCain eats babies and the other says that Obama kills puppies, how does this affect my vote?
I also completely fail to understand the massive group of so-called "undecided voters" that everyone is scrambling for. How can anyone be undecided at this point? It's not like these candidates have so much in common that it comes down to splitting hairs here.
Obviously political ads are propagandist in nature, but I love that now the election is growing ever closer, that the rhetoric has been dialed up in really interesting ways. I saw a McCain ad this morning that opens with Obama's face on the screen, and he is made to look like he is much more dark-skinned than he is. He looks like Olivier did in Othello of the 1960's, painted in blackface with some kind of offensive tar paint. This shot of Obama could not make him look any more Other. Then there's a Shaffer ad that criticizes "Boulder Liberal Mark Udall," and makes use of the phrase "Boulder Liberal" about six times in the thirty seconds. The voice over spits out the phrase with marked acidity, as if the notion of a Boulder Liberal is so distasteful. I'd be offended if these kinds of tactics weren't so openly hilarious and appealed to anything more than the lowest common denominator.
But the same strategy has been applied lately to other types of ads. Have you noticed? There is a rash of new Microsoft commercials depicting "normal" people (one of whom looks decidedly like a fundamentalist Muslim with a smile - I'm just sayin'...) using the new Microsoft "Mojave" or something like that. After they've all glowed about how "tight" and "cool" the operating system is, it is revealed to these folks that what they're really using is Windows Vista. They are all surprised, of course, because they've been unwitting victims of the smear campaign against Vista. One guy says "I guess it's all about using it, huh?" as if to say that if you don't like Vista, it's because you're too stupid to use it properly. Love it. Really.
The other one is a play upon the "I'm a Mac; I'm a PC" commercials in which all of the people are "PCs" and incredibly productive members of society. Take that, Apple.
I think my favorite one, however, is the series of ads that run during daytime television in which one mom offers another mom's child a soft drink and the receiving mom says, "don't you know that's full of high-fructose corn syrup? Don't you know what they say about it?" and the asking mom replies "What do they say about it? That it's made from corn and has the exact same calorie value as sugar?" The receiving mom is of course stumped on what to say next and concedes. The voice over says, "find out the facts." Laughable.
If I listened to TV, I would believe that Pizza Hut can make high-end restaurant quality pasta (with clever combinations like bacon cheese macaroni... guh), high-fructose corn syrup is good for me, all politicians are evil (which is probably more like truth), PCs are good things, Windows Vista doesn't suck, and that I need education advice from people who can barely speak their own native language.
I suppose it's no surprise, then, that even the church down the street has resorted to a beer ad to get people to think that Jesus is cool.
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