commercial interest

With the flu season in full swing I decide to tuck a box of kleenex under my arm and take a few moments to reconnect with my couch.

It's been a while since I've sat in front of the TV and I must say I'm completely reclined at the absurdity of what's fed to me every time my program takes a time out

What is this slop they've slipped into the IV.

An ad for lawyer services follows a mother as she follows her teenaged son around the house. “this is the last time she will make lunch for him”, “this is the last time she will pick up after him”, “this is the last time she will say good-bye”. A drunk driver will kill him on his way to school.  Now she's gonna have to call --- services.

Are you kidding me?

Next, an ad shows a pre-teen child walking away from a crowd and laying down in a field on her back. A white sheet is placed over her body and pulled up over her head. She is dead. A warning about driving drunk.

For pete's sake people.

Is this really necessary, with all the real life violence and sadness we experience on a daily basis that we need to be hammered with violent images during the down time too? Is that what it takes to extend our attention span so we'll buy an idea?

Then there're those lame ass Lotto 6/49 commercials poking at people struggling “some people have to deal with tragedy blah blah blah... well this (winning scads of $$) is my scorching desert” or the one where the guy buys, buys, buys all the cars and toys.

Lay around and buy...

That's all those lame ass script writers at the Lotto lab can come up with. Well someone certainly won the lottery with that job.

And then there are the Boatshow commercials. Yah, that's really funny when the old man psyches his grandson up for a day of fishing with gramps in a boat, and then there's no boat. That's just sad, not to mention mean. What a loser.

Violence with a hammer, to make sure the message sinks in, greed and consumption, insensitivity and callousness. 

But surely they insult our intelligence with those assumptions...yes?...  only, no one is saying anything, are they. No one seems to be disagreeing. The ads still run. We watch them without disruption.  Man it's embarrassing being human.

moot or hooey?

humans will relate much quicker and easier to something negative than something positive, and respond likewise.