Thursday, February 08, 2007

Superbowl Whiners

Yes we watched the superbowl – a. we are American, b. did you not notice the profile, there are two males in this house – and they both play/played football all through school, c. there generally isn’t anything else on, especially anything that allows you to use it as an excuse for gastronomic overindulgence.

So yesterday my friend (who only watched some of the game, she is single, has two daughters, and her mother lives with her – no men in the house (yes I’m sexist) – and she probably had other crap to do). Anyhow, yesterday she called me and said “I need your perspective” – this usually means that her fundamental religious training and strictly defined personal morals are at odds with her open-mindedness and/or her ability to look at things very very logically – and when she gets my feedback, she can usually find which side of the fence she wants to fall on. We actually agree on most everything, in spite of our different spiritual paths. [I call her for perspective also]

Apparently the flap over the Snickers Commercial was in high gear at her workplace – which to be fair to my “readers” – she does work in broadcasting. She missed the commercial during the game, knew I would have seen it, and wanted to know what my feelings were. Well…

For crying out loud, you stupid whiney assed Americans and the freakin drama queen media have done it again – get over yourselves. Let’s review (just in case someone actually stumbles into my blog that is from oh say another planet and hasn’t heard of this), two guys are working on an engine, one opens a snickers bar, and puts it in his mouth, and like a cigar leaves it hanging out (I would be afraid of dropping the chocolaty goodness onto the engine and would never have let go, but that really is beside the point) – the other guy, overcome by the temptation of the most wonderful candy bar he’s ever seen, bites onto the other end; they keep biting their way through the candy bar until they meet in the middle and their lips touch. They freak out at the prospect of having kissed, and jump up and one says to the other “quick do something manly” – they both reach into their shirts and pull out wads of chest hair – we here at ‘chez politically incorrect’ laughed our asses off – particularly when the one guy pulled out a wad of chest hair that could have served as a wig for someone.

Well it never occurred to me that this was ‘anti-homosexual’ – I didn’t even think of it as a ‘homosexual’ encounter. Two PEOPLE who weren’t attracted to each other accidentally kissed – if I accidentally ate my way up a snickers bar that was hanging out of my mailman’s mouth, or my brother’s mouth, or my gay hairdresser’s mouth, or my bitchy next door neighbor’s mouth, etc. – I would have been grossed out – these are not people I have any desire to kiss. It was not about homosexuality, or at least not entirely, it was about ewwwwwwww we just did something that doesn’t fit with our own personal style and now we have to reinforce who we are.

So, I give my opinion to my friend who tells me that she looked over a few blogs to ‘research’ because of all the flap at work and she even ran across people ranting about it not being appropriate during a football game because football is ‘family entertainment’. You will get NO argument from me that football is ‘family entertainment’ – in fact I wrote several letters years ago when my daughter was a toddler in a playpen and we left her alone in the living room with the t.v. during commercials to go get some food or something – well she starts screaming in horror and we run in and she is watching a commercial for ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ – and she is terrified, she even had nightmares for a few nights. I was way super pissed that they movie commercials have a need to be so graphic and hideous – if the movie is rated R – the commercials that are shown on television should NOT portray the reasons why they are R – particularly during a t.v. show that has a general audience rating. Guys kissing are not going to scar my children – be real.

So let’s review, there were commercials for horror movies during the superbowl, graphic commercials – no one is screaming. A rabbit molested a mouse during a superbowl commercial (again we laughed our asses off), no one is screaming. Two lions made fun of Latins (we laughed), no one is screaming. A girl was portrayed as clumsy, another girl was portrayed as slutty, there was casual sex – most certainly unprotected casual sex, there was an old guy getting his butt kicked, there was a portrayal of a classic children’s game reinvented with dangerous violence (my son says – what if kids start throwing scissors???), there was sexual harassment in the workplace, deviant sexual behaviour – really much to be offended by – oh wait… because of one simple premise – things that are funny are usually a little bit WRONG – and we expect to be amused and entertained during our superbowl commercials – also it doesn’t hurt to have commercials be entertaining so people will watch them instead of refilling their plates with hot wings and going pee, then they might actually buy your product – isn’t that the point?

We are going to have a hard time selling products to the masses if we don’t advertise; advertising is competitive, you have to have the better beer ad so that people will want to drink your beer; better = more entertaining; more entertaining can = funnier; funny = a little bit wrong; a little bit wrong = offensive to some. It’s really just capitalist math, don’t scream about the ‘anti-gay’ message, go live someplace communist where everyone is equal and advertising is unnecessary and bitch about how capitalism is the enemy – enjoy your little gray suit! The bonus to living in a communist country, aside from the lack of advertising, is that the media is state controlled, so while you still won’t get any valid reliable truthful correct news reports, at least they won’t be overselling their lies and drama, and you will know you aren’t getting the whole story and you won’t expect integrity in the reporting. There also aren’t any churches, so the judgmental freaks who want to scream at you for your choices won’t be around to make your life hell and use their big mouths to try to convince themselves that they are on the path to heaven.

There are many much greater things to be bitching and whining about, things that actually do have adverse affects on the american youth - maybe we should re-focus for the good of the entire community?

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