Category: default || By jt3y

If you can believe conservative talk radio and religious leaders, our American culture is headed straight down the sewer. There are days when I start to agree. Like the other night, when I saw what I think might be the first-ever commercial for K-Y Jelly on network TV, and during the 9 o'clock hour.

Actually, to be perfectly accurate, it wasn't for K-Y Jelly (which, by the way, tastes lousy on toast), but for something called "K-Y heated massage oil and personal lubricant." I suppose this could have entirely non-adult uses, couldn't it? It's a personal lubricant, so maybe the K-Y people intend for you to use it on squeaky hinges and rusty tools. ("Hey, ma! I can't free up the bolts on this here plow! Fetch me some of that there personal lubricant!") And there are perfectly innocent massages, though perhaps not in most of those massage parlors that advertise with those little tiny ads in the back of the newspaper.

But I think those of us over the age of, oh, 10 understand what the product is really for, especially when the commercial shows us two randy people sitting on a bed, making eyes at one another.

Now, women have long had to sit and watch while television advertised every form of pill for curing what the ads euphemistically call "E.D." (which does not stand for "emergency department," although if the condition caused by these pills lasts more than four hours, that's where you should go) and for "personal male enhancement." I particularly liked the ones featuring Mike Ditka throwing a football through a tire, and "Smiling Bob," holding up a little hot dog. (Get it? A wiener! Ha ha ha ha. Subtle.)

So why shouldn't the female of the species be targeted by some of these products, too? After all, turnabout is fore ... er, fair play, right?

It's just that I'm not sure that I want to watch any of these ads while I'm sitting around, scratching my feet and trying to understand why people watch a show as badly written as "CSI: Miami," or why everybody loves Raymond.

For years, local TV has run several ads every hour for lawyers encouraging you to sue if you think medical malpractice, poorly designed products or partly cloudy skies are responsible for your being poor and miserable. I saw a new one recently from the king of the Western Pennsylvania ambulance chasers, urging you to sue the government if your road isn't maintained properly and you think it may have been the cause of your recent car accident, rather than the fact that you're a lousy driver. Thinking about taking him up on that offer? Guess where the government gets its money from? You, you nitwit! I guess now there's no fee unless they get money from you. (Notice how they rarely run ads encouraging you to sue for legal malpractice.)

Local TV is also big on commercials for phone sex lines ... oh, excuse me, "chat" lines. (Maybe I should try calling one of those up sometime, on someone else's phone, just to "chat." "So, what's new? How's your mom? Good. Are still working at the phone sex place?") Now we've got network TV commercials for enhancing your sexual pleasure.

Is there anything that advertising executives wouldn't do commercials for? Fifty years ago, one of the best science fiction radio shows, "X-Minus-One," did an episode ("The Parade") where aliens hired an Earth advertising agency to create a campaign that would soften people up for an invasion.

One wonders if McCann-Erikson, BBD&O, et al would be willing to whip up a publicity blitz to change the image of terrorism.

I can hear the slogans now ...

"Gee? No, Jihad."

"Al Qaeda Can't Wait for Muhammed."

"Reach Out and Bomb Someone."

Maybe I'm overreacting, but I don't think so. Yesterday, I saw a billboard that chilled me to the bone. Apparently, a Jimmy Buffett impersonator is doing a concert in the Mon-Yough area.

It's not bad enough that people pay good money to see Jimmy Buffett; no, now they're forking over money to watch someone imitate Jimmy Buffett. If that doesn't prove that American culture is declining at an alarming pace, I don't know what does.