Working in advertising in the 1970’s - 1980’s, car dealers ruled the roost. You couldn’t escape their commercials, no matter how hard you tried.
But when the economy bottomed out in the late 1980’s, everything changed. And if economic disaster wasn’t enough, the beast we now know as the Internet trained consumers to research everything from the relative comfort of their living rooms: MSRP, invoice, dealer price, asking price, real price, fake price, book value, even magazine value! And let’s not overlook all those young actress wannabes jumping out of your computer screen to take you on a tour of the dealership. Enough, already!
Who owns the airwaves today? Pharmaceutical companies. Non-stop ads.
Our only respite is political advertising, which ranks even lower than Pharma on the respite scale.
Do you ever wonder how much health care costs would drop if Big Pharma eliminated all this garbage? Or at least cut it by 99%? Listen, even if you wanted to buy all those pills they’re hawking, you can’t! Unless, of course, you beg a prescription from your doctor who, we’re told, happens to reap hefty financial enticements to write that prescription for you.
Disclaimers are the norm. In fact, the disclaimer is the commercial! A woman’s voice murmuring in the background that you might die from unintended side effects, so ‘talk to your doctor, see if xyz if right for you.’ How can you talk to you doctor if you’re already dead? ‘Tell your doctor if are allergic to xyz.’ Wait a minute! Shouldn’t your doctor already know that? After a while, we begin to think that everyone, everywhere, is ingesting nothing but pills. There’s the blue one. Yes, it might cause a four-hour erection, in which case you better get to a doctor right away. Pulleeze!
But wait! Why do all the men experiencing erectile disfunction look 40-years-old on TV? And why are all their women 20-year-old, mostly naked super models? And why are they all sitting together in bathtubs on the beach? Don’t they take showers? And why are all those voluptuous and enticing young women luxuriating in lingerie talking about men who just can’t keep it up? And why do they all have Australian accents? Don’t they have any dysfunctional men in Australia? And why can't women live a fulfilling life unless they take hormone replacement pills at age 30? What about the purple pill you can take before you eat, so you can stuff yourself with greasy food without getting heartburn? Or, the yellow pill, the green pill, and now the pink pill. I could go on, ad nauseam. But then you’d need another pill to silence me!
Whoa, there! Let’s all take a deep breath. Now another. ‘Ahhh. That’s better.’ The human body runs like a Swiss clock, rarely missing a beat. On the rare occasion that Cass and I visit a doctor, the nurses look at us like we’re freaks. Simply because we don’t have a list of pills we take. One for me. And it isn’t blue. None for Cass. Hey, we’re still here!
© Jeff Resnick 2018
All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved
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