What else do you call this bizarre thesis about the connection between the war in Iraq and Super Bowl ads?

No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this yearÂ’s commercials.

More than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated, cartoonlike vein that was intended to be humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous.

For instance, in a commercial for Bud Light beer, sold by Anheuser-Busch, one man beat the other at a game of rock, paper, scissors by throwing a rock at his opponentÂ’s head.

In another Bud Light spot, face-slapping replaced fist-bumping as the cool way for people to show affection for one another. In a FedEx commercial, set on the moon, an astronaut was wiped out by a meteor. In a spot for Snickers candy, sold by Mars, two co-workers sought to prove their masculinity by tearing off patches of chest hair.

There was also a bank robbery (E*Trade Financial), fierce battles among office workers trapped in a jungle (CareerBuilder), menacing hitchhikers (Bud Light again) and a clash between a monster and a superhero reminiscent of a horror movie (Garmin).

It was as if Madison Avenue were channeling Doc in “West Side Story,” the gentle owner of the candy store in the neighborhood that the two street gangs, the Jets and Sharks, fight over. “Why do you kids live like there’s a war on?” Doc asks plaintively. (Well, Doc, this time, there is.)

Let's see. We saw silliness, We saw sci-fi tributes, lthe Garmin ad -- straight out of the 1960s Japanese show Ultraman. And yes, we saw stupidity, in the form of the face-slapping ad. Like so many times in the past, the ads were juvenile and designed to stick in the mind using big-budget special effects.

I'm curious -- what do the folks at the al-Qaeda Ministry of Intelligence and Propaganda New York Times think of Tom and Jerry or Bugs Bunny?

Really -- when your anti-war, anti-Bush bias sneaks into an analysis of Super bowl ads, your have ceased being a credible news source -- although we've known that about the Grey Lady for years.

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Posted by: Greg at 11:53 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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