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If newspapers fail, those
ads will only get worse
of TheColumnists.com
I don’t really
want to write the obituary for newspapers though everyone else
is doing that these days with the sinking L.A. Times, Chicago
Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Long Island’s Newsday
and even the good gray lady, The New York Times.
The New York Times has to put up its new Times Square building
in a mortgage deal to stay financially viable.
What a revolting development.
Only my former 30 year employer, The New York Post, seems
not to care that it is bleeding big bucks.
Owner Rupert Murdoch has so much money from his News Corp empire
that losing 10 or 15 million a year on his journalistic toy,
gossip central for show business, matters not a bit.
Here’s what happens when the papers go down and television
and internet goes up:
More ads for blue pills that make your sex life exciting at 60
and more seniors out in a woodsy area somewhere sitting in old
bath tubs, holding hands, and discussing just when the time is
right.
Did that new mother in India at age 70 and her 72-year-old stud
muffin hubby do it with or without help from the penile pharmacists?
Did the old guy have an erection that lasted four hours and had
to call the docs for help? My mates all agree they wouldn’t
call any docs if they had an erection that lasted four hours.
They would call The Guinness Book of Records.
What about those no-smoking ads that show a guy breathing through
a tube and sounding like the fog horns on the Staten Island ferry?
The next President of the United States, Barack Obama, has admitted
he steals a puff every now and then. Will we see him puffing
away like FDR with the long cigarette holder?
Obama has to fix the economy, get us out of Iraq, clean the air,
provide health care for all and undo the trillion dollar debt.
Most people want it done in the first hundred days. Isn’t
he entitled to a puff now and then?
What about those pills that promise to diminish all the sounds
and smells common to most households, especially those where
a Social Security check is cherished on the first of every month?
How about those ads for bad breath, smelly feet, raging underarms
and drippy noses? Isn’t it just lovely sitting in your newly
cleaned living room when some misshapen character appears on
the screen to warn you about personal pollution?
Then you have the ads for diseases you can’t spell, never
heard of and scare the hell out of you as they show some sweet
kid wrapped in bandages like a war ravaged victim.
What about the television ads for charities that specialize in
rebuilding the faces of burn victims or birth victims without
any appreciation for the sensibilities of others who suffer nightmares
after viewing these distressing pictures?
Wouldn’t a word about the work of the charity without a
photograph of a damaged, distorted human being sell as well?
How about those ads that show the heads of people exploding in
pain or falling off the shoulders or flying away from the body
like a midnight express train?
Then there are those plastic surgery ads that show an unattractive
woman having her face cut apart in hopes she will look Angelina
Jolie. No chance.
They say the biggest pill business in America has to do with
diets. Oprah tells you how her good doctor pal got her weight
down with a few pills and lots of exercise and now she is back
up over 200 pounds again. She can’t figure it out. Well,
eating might have helped.
Sir Winston Churchill ate heartily, smoked incessantly, drank
heavily, caroused endlessly and slept occasionally. He made it
to 90.
Oh yeah, one other thing about Churchill. He napped. He called
them power naps, especially useful before big meetings with Roosevelt
and Stalin.
All those television ads for better body parts make me unhappy
and sleepy. I’m off to my power nap.
©2008 by Maury Allen.
The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustration
is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd.
E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted
Dec. 15, 2008.
TO ACCESS MAURY ALLEN'S ARCHIVE OF COLUMNS
ON THIS SITE, CLICK HERE: ALLEN ARCHIVE.
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