Skewed Society

By Andrew Mell
Western Herald

Less than a week from now, butts will be glued to the couch for Super Bowl Sunday. The Super Bowl always provides a unique challenge for viewers as it’s one of the only times each year where people don’t want to leave the room during the commercials.

It’s such a challenge finding time to urinate.

The game itself is exciting as two teams battle for the NFL championship, usually with the network bringing out a wide array of new camera angles and flashy graphics to display stats and information. If we’re lucky enough, it’ll actually be a competitive game as well.

Then of course you have the commercials. Companies spend millions on commercial development trying to make their ads stick out during America’s most watched television event. It’s the one time where commercials are entertaining rather than repetitive and lousy.

Aside from the recent influx of movie advertisements, Super Bowl commercials are typically overdone for the purpose of our entertainment. Whether the commercial is advertising beer, or online trading services, many of them are well received.

They’d better be good, too, considering how much companies that place the ads have to pay for just a 30 second time slot. CBS is charging between 2.5 and 3 million dollars depending on what part of the telecast the commercial will air during.

Bearing in mind the economy, you might theorize that the commercials might be a hard sell, but as of last weekend CBS reported only having a couple of slots still available.

You also might theorize that since football is a true American sport and a completely non-political event, that the Super Bowl might actually be immune from controversy. On that note, you’d be wrong.

There have been two commercial propositions thus far that have drawn very public criticisms: Focus on the Family, a religious family values group, has proposed a pro-life commercial featuring popular Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother. ManCrunch.com, a gay dating Web site, has proposed a commercial featuring two men watching the Super Bowl before breaking into a ferocious make-out session.

The Focus on the Family commercial, which has been accepted by CBS, highlights how Tim Tebow almost wasn’t born. His mother, who was experiencing difficulties during her pregnancy, opted to have Tim rather than aborting the pregnancy.

The commercial hasn’t been released, so we’ll have to wait to see the specific content of it, but it appears to be a well-meant, positive ad that portrays the types of lives that can be saved when women decide to keep their babies as opposed to aborting them. I don’t think anyone would debate that Tim Tebow has already had a very successful, influential, and far-reaching life, with so much more to come.

ManCrunch.com has released their commercial to their Web site, and the ad has been rejected by CBS. The commercial, as previously stated, is two men watching the Super Bowl together when at one point they both reach for the chip bowl at the same time. After their hands brush up against one another, a passionate kissing session breaks out for the duration of the commercial.

Some people are upset by the approval of the Tebow ad and the rejection of the homosexual ad. But are these commercials really comparable at all? Regardless of the fact that it’s two men kissing, it could be completely heterosexual and still very inappropriate; would you really want your 5-year-old daughter asking about what’s going on?

Do we have any decency whatsoever anymore in this country?

But in all honestly, how many people who watch the Super Bowl routinely watch football at all? I mean really…

Also, if there’s going to be big deal about this, why don’t they throw huge fights over erectile dysfunction commercials or contraception commercials?

Really though, the Super Bowl should stick to funny commercials. When the game is done, what do we talk about the next day? With the exception of Justin Timberlake and wardrobe malfunctions, more often than not, it’s “Did you see the commercial where…..? I almost peed my pants laughing…”
So instead of stirring up controversy with racy commercials, let’s get back to the game and leave politics for another day.

Andrew Mell, a Western Herald opinion columnist, is a senior majoring in aviation, and can be reached via e-mail at melltimejr@hotmail.com.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=14309

Posted by HeraldAdmin on Jan 31 2010. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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