Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Anti-American thoughts.

For the same reason I would not have gone to a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960, I refuse to watch anything that airs on any Fox station today. 

I don't want to do business with racists, in effect support them. So I withhold what I can, in the case of the Super Bowl, my eyeballs.

To be 100% honest, I stopped watching football about ten years ago. To my eyes the game got more and more violent, the announcing got more and more dumb, and the local teams got more and more awful. 

It didn't help football's cause that in 2017 a neuropathologist examined the brains of 111 NFL players and all but one were found to have C.T.E., a degenerative brain disease linked to being hit repeatedly on the head. I don't want to condone that with my watching either. 

Of course all the commercials were watchable before the event and after three or four sessions, I made it through most of them. I thought the Hyundai "Wicked Smaht" spot was funny--a good product demonstration. 

The Alexa spot with Ellen DeGeneres, too, was funny. Though anyone who's watching realizes that Alexa is more privacy-stealing than it is helpful. So while the spot was entertaining, it did nothing to allay my fears about the product listening in on me, stealing and selling my data and more. Same with the Google "Loretta" spot. Same with the Facebook "I wanna rock," spot.

Facebook, Amazon and Google are a trio of the most evil democracy-destroying companies in the world. If you read the paper you know that. Of course, those companies, 3/4 of the privacy-killing acronym FANG know you don't know that, because they've killed all the newspapers, so maybe their spots were fine.


Also Walmart. A small-town-killing company praising small towns while accepting billions in corporate welfare.

Most of the other spots, left me dead. I already knew Porsches were fun to drive. And electric cars like the Audi e-tron better for the environment. What did I learn? What brand truth was revealed? Zero.

Most of the other commercials were for food-like-objects containing red dyes #2, #4, #7 and #14. They were about as relevant to me as the latest recipe of fricassee of muskrat. Though Snickers, Little Caesars and Mountain Dew were funny enough.

I liked the Soda Stream spot, though I'm weary of the oblivious white guy who's the butt of every joke.

In all, very little I wish I did.

More sound and fury signifying nothing. 

Except clients and agencies, like rich people and politicians, often have more money than sense.


As Bugs Bunny once said, I shoulda stood in bed.


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