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Drug makers face off in Ad Bowl
January 31, 2004
Watching the Super Bowl tomorrow will make
you aware of one of the great problems facing
America today, one of those vexing, troubling
things that makes you worry about the future
of our republic and whether this great nation
can survive.
If the ads during the Super Bowl are any indication,
this is a problem of epidemic proportions, affecting
every man, woman and, in the case of Michael
Jackson, child.
Of course, I’m not talking about the
huge federal deficit and the Bush administration’s
policy of spending money at a pace that would
embarrass Paris Hilton. MoveOn.com, a progressive
Web site, wanted to air an ad during Super Bowl
XXXVIII — that’s Roman for, hmmm,
a lot — that highlighted the debt. The
ad shows children working at adult jobs to pay
off the massive debt that President Dubya and
his Congressional buddies are running up with
the taxpayers’ MasterCard.
But you won’t be seeing that ad during
the Super Bowl. CBS honchos refused to run it
because they are money-grubbing, spineless weasels.
No, that’s not the reason. The network
said it refused to run the ad because it has
a policy against running advocacy ads during
sporting events. Funny, that doesn’t stop
them from running those anti-drug ads, you know,
the ones that say some aging boomer toking up
is responsible for international terrorism.
And it goes without saying that the policy has
nothing to do with the fact that CBS’s
owner, Viacom, is sucking up to the Bush administration
so it can become bigger and make even more money.
Nah.
The biggest problem facing America at this
juncture is a malady that strikes aging males
and Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro. Judging
from the number of ads we’ll be seeing
Sunday from manufacturers of drugs to treat
this malady, it is much more serious than, say,
acid-reflux disease or dry skin or cancer.
Two drugs will be facing off — Cialis
and Levitra. Viagra, as of Wednesday, according
to the New York Times, had decided to sit this
one out.
Which is a shame, because those Viagra
commercials are great. You know the ones I’m
talking about. A guy walks into work and all
his co-workers are wondering what’s different
about him. “Did you get a haircut?”
they ask. “Did you get a raise?”
they ask. None of them ask, “Bob, why
are you walking funny?”
The Cialis commercials are just as good, though.
The one shows a couple sitting in two bathtubs,
side by side, at the crest of a hill looking
out over a verdant valley. Soft music plays
and the narrator asks, “Are you ready?”
And you’re thinking, of course, “Ready?
Here in the bathtub? Outside, in front of the
neighbors?” You would think the neighbors
would complain. Or perhaps set up their video
cameras so they can make the bathtub people
famous in a Paris Hilton kind of way.
Levitra has a celebrity spokesman — former
Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka. He’s hanging
around football players and talking about his
particular malady and suggests that guys watching
at home, “Get back in the game.”
Game?
Of course, the fact that there are three drugs
to treat this particular malady is a clear indication
that guys are still in charge of making the
big decisions at drug companies. Sure, they
could do research into drugs to cure Alzheimer’s
or cancer or male pattern baldness. Forget that,
the real money’s in helping guys like
Mike Ditka scare the snot out of you while you’re
trying to watch the Super Bowl. Not to mention
the fact that many health insurance plans cover
Viagra but won’t cover birth control pills.
And the ads are a reflection of several things
happening in our culture.
It used to be people kept embarrassing medical
problems to themselves — the only exception
being, of course, your grandparents, who discuss
various malfunctions of their bodily functions
in graphic detail over Sunday dinner. There
is a direct correlation between aging and an
obsession with digestive system function and
the willingness to discuss such function while
other people are trying to eat lasagna.
And it’s the continuation of a trend
of convincing people to get drugs from their
doctors that they may or may not need. None
of these ads come right out and say exactly
what the drug does so you can imagine that that
could cause some confusion. What would happen
if some guy got confused and took Ditka’s
advice to get back into the game, thinking that
Levitra treated, say, acid reflux?
He’d have to call his doctor and say,
“Doc, I still have heartburn, but a lot
of people are asking me if I got a haircut or
a raise, or why I’m walking funny.”
On the other hand, it just might take the guy’s
mind off his heartburn.
source:-http://www.boston.com/news
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