By Brian Ojanpa
October 14, 2008 12:00 pm
—
Eugene McDonald hated watching TV commercials. That’s why the then-president of Zenith Electronics ordered his engineers circa 1950 to come up with a device to zap them at the push of a button.
The godsend of TV remote control is never more apparent than in presidential election years.
Thank you, Mr. McDonald, for enabling us to wear our index fingers to the bone these past few months.
See political ad. See ad start. See man zap. See man zap to something — anything — else for relief.
Even a shopping channel carries more dignity by comparison.
But something surreal has occurred: The ad cycles have reached a point where their venality and sleaziness have actually morphed into self-parody.
As long as candidate political machines are going to pervert the election process, they may as well go full bore. And two of them have.
So thank you, Norm Coleman and Al Franken, for becoming inadvertently entertaining. Thank you for soaring to new heights of low-rent cajoling in your wretched cage match to the death.
Your commercials have achieved the rarefied trifecta of having gone from cloying to cutthroat to sublimely pathetic.
Of late, Franken has trotted out his recovering alcoholic wife to give him props on being such a supportive hubby, while Coleman checks in with his ode to his “fishing buddy,” a cute little boy who has battled bone cancer.
When people vying for high office feel they must market spousal dysfunction and a child’s disease in order to “win,” then we have reached something akin to a seventh circle of hell.
All this desperate grappling for votes may be great entertainment, in a perverse sort of way, but what does any of it have to do with getting bridges built or ensuring grandma won’t have to knock over a liquor store to buy her meds?
The larger issue here, of course, is voter responsibility. Anyone who opts for a candidate on the basis of paid ads shouldn’t be voting in the first place.
That’s stating the obvious. That also isn’t reality.
We don’t elect people anymore. We buy them off a store shelf. The ones with the most eye-catching packaging go into our carts. The contents within are incidental.
Brian Ojanpa is a Free Press staff writer. Call him at 344-6316 or e-mail bojanpa@mankatofreepress.com.
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.
Photos
