Put this in your CLIO pipe and smoke it

A not-safe-for-work safer sex ad

Bias? What bias?

I started a coding gig out in Long Island (ok, eastern Queens, but still well beyond the reach of the NY subway system) so I've had to familiarize myself with the Long Island Rail Road commuter service. Thankfully this is a reverse commute (I live in Brooklyn, safely snuggled against the judgmental, non-eye-contact-making busom of Manhattan) so I get to sprawl contentedly across any number of seats while listening to my bluetooth wireless iPod, reading my New Yorker, saying things like "oh c'mON people...." to no-one in particular etc, etc.

Anyway, on the ride Monday I noticed this wall poster ad inside the train. Unlike the city subway trains, which have their ads locked behind plexiglass and key, the ones on the LIRR trains are just pasted (lightly gummed, more like it) on the train bulkhead in a way so that once their ad-buy time has expired they can be pulled off just as easily as those "WARNING: YOU MUST HAVE YOU EYES OPEN WHILE DRIVING" stickers on new car steering wheels.

The in question ad is for the Amazon Kindle.. oh, sorry the Sony Reader.. I got confused because in an incredible feat of publicity tour-de-force, as a result of the quality of their product, nobody has already/will ever hear of the Sony Reader (it's like, welcome to 1994, dude). But what is interesting about this ad is not the product itself, but rather that it made me think of L. Brent Bozell having an apoplectic fit the likes of which would amuse me for years. It portrays a photograph of a pile of hardcover books, some of which are the sort of tomes enveloped in SEP (Somebody Else's Problem) fields like Dickens, Melville, Twain, pulp bull etc.... and then among them are...

The Audacity Of Hope (Obama, Barack)
The New American Story (Bradley, Bill (*))

... the only political / non-fiction shout-outs in the ad. This is the sort of bias that makes my day.

The offending ad (...to L. Brent Bozell, I can only
imagine while yawning and scratching my balls),
shot against the lovely backdrop of my home office floor

(*) it is further interesting to note that Bill Bradley's Wikipedia article bio section begins with the words "Bradley is an Eagle Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America." Some Wikipedia contributors are a bit... self-absorbed.

Even with a bad jaw, Roger Ebert socks it to me and makes my head spin

If booze companies advertise for responsible drinking and tobacco companies warn of health hazards, why don't gas companies ask you to buy a hybrid?

(what a place to have your head spun around with that thought; that’s why I like the guy).

His rhetorical question is part of his review of The 11th Hour, the recent environmental docco sponsored by Leo DiCaprio. And it is a valid thought... In the two examples given, alcohol & tobacco industries, their admonishments /warnings result in a reduced consumption of their product (or are seen as doing so, anyway) but they are also a strategic move on their part in order to give society an out for allowing those industries to otherwise do what they are going to do anyway. (Let's all be slightly cynical here for a second).

Given that thought scenario, why don't petroleum companies, instead of this quasi-apologetic-but-more-really-like-avoiding-the-bloody-issue ("we support".. "we believe"...), buy themselves more (albeit very finite) time by acknowledging the fact that limited consumption of their product is preferable to unlimited, wanton debauchery...?

ExxonMobile, BP, Shell, et al: It's 1964 and you've been called to task by the Environmental Protector-General; what you gonna do?

Oliver Stone's Iraq War Ad

Slate's take (MediaCurve.com 's actually) on Oliver Stone's anti-Iraq War ad is somewhat interesting (note that the Republican "total approval" curve never actually goes below 0%/neutral !) but all I'm left thinking afterwards is: "It took Oliver Stone to produce this ??"

David Lynch on product placement

no, really, tell us how you feel...

(link goes to his site, which includes a daily weather report delivered by mr. man himself)