With the Super Bowl just one week away, already the tedious conversations have started about what is sure to be another round of witless shilling before, during, and after the game. Spare me from those who breathlessly anticipate, and then evaluate—with a straight face, no less—the crass commercial messages.
The Super Bowl ads are why the TV remote was invented. If I'm not leaving the room while the game pauses for advertisers to use flatulent monkeys or unbelievably dim-witted males to sell more weak beer, then I'm changing the channel or just hitting the mute button. I take a small pleasure in refusing to be either a part of the live (or should that be comatose?) audience for the smarmy scripts or a participant afterward in the dull discussions of them. If only there were a way for Nielsen to measure the number of viewers indifferent to the small fortune paid for the time between live action on the field.
In the 1967 film “Bedazzled,” Peter Cook, as the devil, laments that he has not done anything really evil since he introduced advertising into the world. And the Super Bowl commercials dramatize how banal that evil is.
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