Before the insistent voice of Billy Mays had thoroughly embedded itself in my consciousness, I overheard a 12-year-old refer to the direct-response TV pitchman as “some clean freak.” Even pre-adolescent sophisticates who have grown up with media—especially pre-adolescent sophisticates who have grown up with media?—have difficulty separating the roles actors play from the actors themselves.
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and by Meagan Dalton, summer intern from Douglas S. Freeman High School in Henrico County, Virginia

Seth Stevenson in Slate worries that the notion of selling out has become obsolete. The occasion for this worry is the participation of the Black Eyed Peas in a Target commercial, which, evidently, has a few conscientious people in a tizzy. The commercial features the Peas’ song, “I Gotta Feeling,” already licensed not once but twice before; even worse, will.i.am has a Target logo on his hat. For these reasons, Stevenson says, “We as a culture must reserve our right to shower disdain on the Black Eyed Peas.”
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News that “survivalists” out West are planning for a financial collapse by stockpiling guns and groceries and feverishly sharing their secrets calls to mind the anarchists who were going to hold a convention but couldn’t agree on a time.
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Summer intern from Douglas S. Freeman High School in Henrico County, Virginia

Burger King’s mascot, “The King”—with his crazy man’s cape, his unceasing smile and his face so heavily lacquered it resembles a melting wax effigy—is creepy. But that’s the point. The creators of this advertising intend the weirdness.
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Last fall when Paul Newman died, an 18-year-old of my acquaintance referred to the film star as “some guy who made salad dressing.” It may be even more difficult for millions of Americans, now that he has died, to know what it is we’re supposed to remember Ed McMahon for. McMahon’s accomplishments, such as they were, are rather difficult to describe. This is complicated by the fact that lots of people think of McMahon in connection with something he didn’t even do. He had no role with the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes. It was American Family Publishers McMahon was associated with, but here, too, it is hard to say just what he did.

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Jim Moran, a Democratic congressman from northern Virginia, is calling on the makers of “erectile dysfunction” drugs to tone down their TV commercials, especially when children are watching. That’s not unreasonable, but still you have to wonder if Moran knows what an enormous force he is taking on by adopting this cause.

Viagra, after all, is everywhere. Jackie Mason, who swears Viagra is the most commercially successful product launch in our history, is nonetheless puzzled by how this could be the case. “They sold 500 million pills in an hour and a half,” Mason says, but you can’t find a man in America who actually bought it it. (Ask around. He’s right.)
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“What’s ruining family life,” a friend declared a few years back, “is all this goddamned intimacy!” A five-times-married father of two grown daughters, he probably knew whereof he spoke. Shortly after this indignant outburst, like Old Man Goriot, he scrimped and saved and lived in a cheap rental to buy his older daughter her own house in a nicer neighborhood. Then, exhausted but satisfied that he had done his duty, he promptly died, paying off the daughter’s mortgage by so doing. Happy end. All this happened well before the day that every middle-class household in America had a computer in every family member’s room, but certainly not before TV, to which he and his girls were utterly devoted. Cable he regarded as a godsend. He especially enjoyed the Playboy Channel.
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Ashton Kutcher, whatever else he may be, isn’t a struggling newspaper. And that’s why, though more than 2 million people follow him on Twitter, he follows only 169.
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The absence of speculation about the Geico Gecko’s sex life comes as something of a surprise, considering how eagerly people are blogging about the amorous inclinations of the cockney lizard’s Progressive Auto Insurance counterpart. Flo, as her “tricked-out name tag” identifies the company’s annoyingly bouncy and perky check-out girl, is described by the actress who plays her, a comedian named Stephanie Courtney, as a “fetish chick.”  I suppose she would know, but there—for my money—all speculation should end.
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Nothing happens quickly in business, so don’t be deceived by all the hype about how the Internet is killing the magazine business. Actually, magazines have been in decline for over 30 years. The Internet is just exacerbating deeper problems.
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