It's Not a Country Half Empty (of Hope), It's a Country Half Full (of Violence!)

I was going to call this post, “How Stupid Do They Think We Are?,” but after George Bush’s speech today on all the reasons to be optimistic about Iraq, I think we know the answer to that question!

The real purpose of this post is to share an unusual experience I had this last weekend as I watched the NCAA College Basketball Tournament. As a dedicated TIVO enthusiast, I really haven’t spent much time watching live TV, and thus commercials, over the past few years. Like many, I relish the opportunity to take advantage of DVR technology to zip right through them. But a basketball tournament, with up to five simultaneous games and frequent jumps to the most exciting game at any moment, requires that you watch it live – even with the commercials!

So here are just a few things I learned from watching the commercials during the NCAA College Basketball Tournament:

1. Sports fans like to paint themselves up, wear stupid costumes, and act like embarrassing idiots while buying insurance, fast food, major appliances, or just about anything else.


2. Joining the Army makes you a man!


3. Miller Genuine Draft is beer, grown up!

Such useful information! Worried that my two teenaged sons might feel the need to prove their manhood by running out to enlist in the military, I was quickly able to head them off by cracking open a couple of Miller Genuine Drafts for them to drink as they watched the rest of the games - like grown ups!

Now getting back to Bush’s speech, which I did not hear but reviewed the transcript - before deciding to skip my lunch. Frankly, I should have skipped the transcript and retained my appetite, but hindsight is 20/20.

At this point in his declining credibility, I’m surprised that Bush is still trying to sell the Iraq war though speeches rather than by following the military and his corporate buddies into the advertising game. I know I’d be more likely to believe that Iraq was going well if, for example, I heard it from a talking gecko! Perhaps, some day soon we will hear the President announce a new deal with the NFL, in which each Super Bowl will end with the quarterback of the winning team being asked what he is going to do after the game, and announcing, “I’m going to Iraq!”