How to Produce the World's Dumbest Commercials

Do you recall Betty Friedan's brilliant remark? In The Feminine Mystique, she gave away the entire mystery of insulting advertising. As an expert on psychology, she observed that one way advertisers capture an audience is to offend them. Was that woman prophetic, or what?

While political correctness teaches us to respect cultural sensitivities 24 by 7, advertisers go out of their way to trade privacy for private parts. Their excuse may be the public's right to information, but what about the public's right to have this information at their beck and call when and where they want it?

Would it be too much to propose channels in the media devoted exclusively to the following:

1. more than you ever wanted to know about cervixes?

2. more than anybody needed to know about penises?

3. more than everybody deserved to know period?

Don't our knowledge bases runneth over, anyway? Do we really merit a lecture on the cervix during a movie? Just shove that content before my attention, and you will compete with unlawful intruders on my block. Who placed advertisers in charge of sex education in America?

If I wanted to major in cervixes, I am completely capable of pursing a degree and graduate work in what once passed for Human Anatomy. Where did Biology go? Is it extinct, too? Explaining the cervix to a kid in the middle of a Holy Mary Pass requires more ingenuity than can reasonably be expected of American parents.

The way to produce the world's dumbest commercials is simple: Just leave all those airy theories about Truth and Justice behind. Concentrate solely on what's inside underwear. Wasn't underwear invented because somebody got up and said: "Well, we need to keep this stuff under wraps"?

"Underwear" is different from "overwear," after all. "Overcoats" exist in our culture, but "overwear" doesn't. Still, advertisers keep dragging out what's under underwear and exalting it OVER everything else. I don't recall voting on this reorganization of priorities, do you? How far would a referendum on Viagra ads get in your school district?