I saw this the other night and instantly thought it was more insidious than any campaign spot I’ve seen this year – and that’s saying something.
A big part of my diet this year has been kicking the high fructose corn syrup right off the menu. I have no doubt that it’s a big part of why I’ve dropped as much weight as I have. But this commercial is just off-the-scale insidious: because this guy can’t think of anything wrong with it, it is therefore by definition just hunky-dory? You know, I probably couldn’t, on absolutely no notice, cough up detailed studies about why smoking is bad for you from memory, or instantly recall a full list of the side-effects of taking heroin. This doesn’t mean, however, that these things are “just fine in moderation.”
Sometimes I think all the Cold War psych ops types moved to Madison Avenue when there was no more Soviet Union to topple.