From 7:00 PM through 8:00 PM Pacific Standard Time (likely on any given day) there were a total of eight commercial advertisements for alcohol on cable television. Two for Tequila, promoting reasonable attitudes and smiling faces, and six for various beers. Everyone was having fun.
And in hospitals across the nation, parents and families grieved over the deaths of sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, mothers and fathers, and babies, as they were dutifully told of their deaths at the hands of a drunk driver. The same drunk driver who was earlier intellectually indemnified by the advertising.
'Don't worry, drink responsibly,' the ads intone. There was a time not so long ago when advertising for alcohol on television was banned----then it sneaked back in, subtly at first, now full bore. Magazines, billboards, Internet ads, and even naming multi-purpose public gathering places after a certain brand of alcohol-----Busch Stadium on Saturday. Be there with a beer in your hand. And the beers are bigger now, as well. Drink three or four 40 oz. brews and see how you feel.
Tobacco, on the other hand, has not yet made its re-entrance into the enormous marketplace of television. What kind of sense does this make? A driver who has smoked ten cigarettes in four hours when compared to a driver who has tossed back ten shots of tequila in four hours? Obviously, there is no moral correlative to be found here, and no regulations which give common sense a good name.
Enough for now. As a culture, we seem driven to destroy ourselves in myriad ways. The advertisements for these processes are mere harbingers---with many to come.
Comments