The evening news and Viagra ads

Watching the first eight minutes of ABC World News Tonight this evening reminded me why I almost never watch the network news programs. In a story on the Democratic presidential contest, the female reporter told us in breathless tones that Hillary Clinton has “taken off the gloves” and is going after Barack Obama with “bare knuckles” in a way that is unprecedented in the campaign. Then there was footage of Hillary speaking to an audience. All she said was: “You’ve been hearing a lot of promises from a lot of politicians over the years. But promises don’t put food on your table.”

THAT was taking the gloves off? THAT was bare knuckles? THAT was unprecedented harshness?

It’s the consistent lack of fit between the reporters’ sensational characterizations of the news, and its actual content, that makes TV unwatchable by any person of normal intelligence. Or at least to this person of normal intelligence.

Which makes me wonder: Who watches the network news? Who in our population finds it tolerable to have such obvious stupid lies thrown in their face, night after night? I’d really like to know. What happened to the supposedly canny, commonsensical American population?

And that’s not mentioning the Viagra ads. Who would want to watch a news program, during the family dinner hour no less, that is routinely interrupted by ads about “erectile dysfunction”? I saw a Viagra ad yesterday, on the evening news, that showed a couple on a motorcycle out West. So the guy is virile enough to be riding a motorcycle across the Great Plains with a chick behind him, but he can’t perform in bed without chemical assistance? Then the couple were shown pulling up to a motel. You saw the motorbike parked outside their motel room, and then the room lights went out.

Meanwhile, combined with this heavy-handed erotic visual message, the entire last half of the ad consisted of a voiceover reciting a long list of all the medical conditions which, if you have them, you should not use Viagra. So the ad is simultaneously invoking (chemically induced) sexual prowess, AND filling your ears with a catalog of weird and off-putting diseases. And all in the middle of the evening news, about matters of war and peace and presidential elections.

“How many perversities can be squeezed into a single situation?” I once asked a conservative acquaintance in the midst of a similar discussion.

“America is about finding out!” he replied.

But how could anyone take such a country seriously?

And that’s still not the worst of it. The worst of it is that these things are never discussed by anyone, including conservatives (remember the social conservatives, who care so much about values? and remember the neoconservatives, who want America to be the moral and political leader of the world?) who also have no problem with the semi-sleazy and totally inappropriate “conservative T-shirt” ads that appear on every mainstream conservative website. No one notices these things any more. No one protests them. No one writes angry letters to the new networks demanding that Viagra ads not be played on the evening news (if even a small number of people did write such letters, the ads would have been stopped). Our “conservative family values” organizations are silent. Our instinctive capacity as a society to react against the totally unacceptable is gone. Yet this perverted media environment in which we live, and our passive acceptance of it, are more damaging to us as a people than trade deficits, the federal debt, and false beliefs about the equality of all cultures.

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I wrote:

“Who in our population finds it tolerable to have such obvious stupid lies thrown in their face, night after night?”

It just occurred to me why it would be in the interest of the media elite to tell obvious lies, even when there seems to be no reason for them to do so. The more they produce a population that does not react against even obvious lies, the more they’ve destroyed the American people’s ability to think and to resist the media’s mind control.

Laura W. writes:

Tocqueville said homicide investigators were unnecessary in America. Whenever there was a murder in an American town, citizens were so outraged they found the murderer all on their own. Can you imagine that today? Even once? Pods have come and snatched us while we slept. The most glaring proof of civic zombie-ness is television. I was watching CNN on Super Tuesday and the reporters got so twisted trying to explain the immense and confusing fourth-grade pie charts in front of them, it hurt to watch. I blame this on American women more than men. Call me a female chauvinist pig, but that’s what they’re supposed to do: write piles of angry letters decrying the poisoning of their children’s minds in between folding the wash and making dinner. Where did their anger go?

Derek C. writes:

You want to know what’s funnier? Obama has complained about these very ads. In his second book, he described the disgust he felt at seeing erectile dysfunction medicine ads pop up during football games when his daughter was in the room.

LA replies:

Good for him.

But what did he do about it? Did he turn off the tv? Did he complain to the networks? Or did he adjust to “reality” and learn to accept the totally unacceptable?

I repeat that I cannot imagine how parents with children would tolerate these ads on their tv for one second! They would get on the phone in a rage and write letters to the network, and in response to this viewer outrage the ads would stop. But the ads have not stopped. Which proves that there has not been such viewer outrage.

The main reason I stopped listening to talk radio about ten years ago as well as watching network news on tv was these sexual enhancement ads. I used to listen regularly to ABC talk radio. When these sleazy ads began appearing in the middle of the Rush Limbaugh program, I called ABC a couple of times to complain. When the ads continued, I stopped listening to ABC. The fact that these ads were appearing on a “conservative” program, and that, apparently, no one including Rush Limbaugh seemed to mind (because if they DID mind the ads would have stopped), indicated to me how superficial people’s “conservatism” really is.

Remember what viewer complaints directed at a media company can accomplish. When conservative viewers complained to CBS about a planned made-for-tv movie about Ronald Reagan that had a hostile left-wing take on him, CBS withdrew the movie from the broadcast network and only showed it on their cable station.

Derek replies:

I’m shooting off the top of my head here, but Obama says he pointed this out in articles and speeches, and he was attacked for being a censor by other liberals. I don’t think he turned off the teevee, and here’s a link with more information:

And relevant passage:

Also at the November decency forum, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., described himself in a statement as “a parent who has had to sit through uncomfortable Cialis commercials while watching television with my 7- and 4-year-old daughters.” The ad Obama cited, for the erectile dysfunction medication Cialis, features snuggly moments between couples of all ages to the tune of The Ronnettes’ “Be My Baby.” And FDA regulations require medical ads to specify risks verbally, resulting in somewhat embarrassing dialogue.

I have no idea what “decency forum” is.

LA replies:

Well, there you have modern America. You have a U.S. Senator, and he’s watching tv with his daughters, and he sees this totally inappropriate thing on tv, and he’s uncomfortable about it, but he continues watching. After all, what’s he going to do, turn off the program? And so everyone in America, even if they have some discomfort about it, accepts the totally unacceptable.

What people must do is stop accepting the totally unacceptable.

A. Gereth writes:

I don’t watch network news but I do watch CNN and I pay close attention to commercials (for the same reason I read The Guardian online daily—to know the enemy). The cultural subtexts are certainly enlightening, in a horrid sort of way.

The Viagra ad does far more than merely promote a product in a way and at a time totally unsuitable to the family dinner hour. It normalizes sexual license both by its context (a one night-stand is more reasonably inferred from it than a loving marital encounter) and its time slot (the dinner hour). And why not? Then-President Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretions and excesses (which occurred in the Oval Office, not the No-tell Motel) were the subject of nationally broadcast nightly newscasts for months. Now his wife is running for that same high office with few, if any, snickering at her husband’s globally publicized infidelity. It’s been a long time since the word “decent” was used unironically to mean anything other than “acceptable in a cool kind of way.”

Even worse than the incessant vulgarity of television, in both the programs and the commercials, is the insidious subtext heralding and promoting the breakdown of traditional society. Here’s a Birds Eye frozen food commercial that really struck me, particularly the last line, “the great improvisation we call family.”

From this we can infer that not only is “family” not a traditional unit upon which Western civilization is based (instead it’s whatever we, as individuals, decide it is) but that this is a development to be celebrated. (Oh, and note that the woman tosses the vegetables to the man so that he, not she, can microwave them.)

There’s a whole slew of man-bashing commercials posted on YouTube. The Fidelity Mutual commercials are particularly offensive, with the wives sneering at and overriding their husbands from start to finish. Here’s one example. She says, “You’re not going to win this argument.” No surprise there, the wonder of it is that her wimpy husband even attempts to do anything other than roll over and play dead. And I can’t help but suspect her faint but still horrifying resemblance to Cindy Sheehan is not simply accidental and/or coincidental.

The subtexts in commercials were key in converting me from a liberal to a conservative. The war of attrition the left is waging upon traditional society is nowhere more apparent than in the promotion of goods and services to the American people.

Laura writes:

“I blame this on American women more than men. Call me a female chauvinist pig, but that’s what they’re supposed to do: write piles of angry letters decrying the poisoning of their children’s minds in between folding the wash and making dinner. Where did their anger go?”

Let me say that Laura is one of the VFR posters for whom I have great respect. But I think she’s not seeing the elephant in the living room here. I, too, blame this assault on tradtion and decency on many American women more than on men. But to me, it’s obvious where their anger went. It dissipated (aptly enough) into thin air back in the late 60’s and early 70’s when advertisers jumped on the feminist bandwagon, encouraging women to “express yourself,” reminding them that they’d “come a long way, baby” and sympathizing with them for being “slaves” to domestic drudgery and housework in any and all forms. Few people will stand up for principle if they see the choice as being between that and giving up a life of political and personal gain and material comfort and ease.

Thankfully, there are still a fair number of traditionally-minded women out there. I think, though, that they are busy shielding their children from the vulgarity and cultural Marxism rather than trying to turn back the tide. Complaints about and criticism of vulgarity are no longer considered signs of one occupying the moral high ground but rather of a hopelessly outdated individual worthy only of disdain and ridicule. Remember, only those combatting racism, sexism and classism now occupy the moral high ground. Every one else is a racist, sexist or bigot and therefore subject to being viewed with contempt, as well as being marginalized and even criminalized.

Contrary to popular belief, you really can learn a lot watching TV.

LA replies:

Excellent comment. And Mr. Gereth is certainly correct about the sick male-bashing in ads today. This is one of the things that an alive citizenry would protest. Imagine a NumbersUSA type membership organization generating a wave of phone calls to each network, program, and sponsor that ran these ads denigrating men.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 14, 2008 08:19 PM | Send