Elitist? Moi?

[Warning: this post contains exasperation and pedantry.]

There is an inverse relationship, I'm fairly sure, between an American's intelligence and how strongly that person believes that the rest of the world is following the dreary minutiae of our country with bated breath.

I've noticed it time upon time. Millions of my fellow citizens — especially if they've never been farther than El Paso or Niagara Falls — are convinced that Ethiopians eagerly discuss the gastrointestinal health of Brangelina; that vast crowds of Germans and Chileans wept when Barbaro went on to the great glue factory in the sky; and that Tibetans and New Zealanders alike converse passionately about the motor oil additives favored by Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Here's the latest example, from a complaint to the FCC about a vaguely risqué Snickers commercial that aired during last month's Superbowl:

I am ashamed that this crap is going out to 200 countries around the world.

Hey, genius, I have a six-part newsflash for you:

1) Almost no one outside North America gives a toss about the Superbowl (or, even funnier, about the so-called 'World Series' with its two participating countries). To the extent that foreign TV stations cover the Superbowl at all, it's typically a video summary of a few minutes, broadcast by some struggling cable operation on a slow news day when the soccer matches got rained out.

As the folks at cracked.com neatly explain,

The fact that most countries don't have running water, let alone reliable Nielsen ratings, enables network executives to pretend that everyone in Darfur is watching the game on a high-def plasma screen on wheels instead of completing their 14-day trek to a UN refugee camp. Much like the idea of the Texans ever winning a Super Bowl, it theoretically could be true, but that doesn't make it any less stupid to say out loud.

2) The commercials you see are specific to our country; they're not part of the video feed that goes out to a yawning world.

3) You're "ashamed" because of a fucking commercial? Did you write letters proclaiming your shame when our president used doctored evidence to lead us into an unnecessary, unwinnable war? When our nation began torturing prisoners? When we abolished habeas corpus? I submit that those things could puzzle and upset people around the globe just a tad more than a spot about chocolate lovers locking lips.

4) The TV spot that so appalls you wouldn't raise an eyebrow except in countries that share your penchant for narrow-minded bullying masquerading as an expression of high morals. Countries like, say, Saudi-Arabia and Singapore and Iran. Do you really want America to be in the same league?

5) 200 countries? Kudos for not claiming it was 230 or 262 or whatever the number is that people who paid even less attention in school than you did believe is correct. Still, the fact is, there are only 193 countries in the world — some of which can be found, in the words of cracked.com, in

...various Third-World regions of our planet where people don't "gather 'round the TV" so much as swat flies and eat each other's hair.

6) Instead of writing whiny letters to the FCC about how "disgusted" and "violated" you feel by a lighthearted joke about two guys' lips accidentally touching, how about using that time to look at an atlas or a geography book in an effort to break the triple curse of ignorance, cultural insularity, and geographic illiteracy?

No, a little knowledge is not a sign that you're turning gay.

[via To the People]

Comments

[fish]

Ashamed....hell yes.....super bowl commercials have been getting less and less entertaining since (in my estimation) the 2000 Super Bowl with such notables as "Cat Wranglers" and "He has money coming out the wazoo"!

Seriously though, anybody who was legitimately offended by any commercial needs to be chased down and apprehended with a butterfly net!

[fish]

Crap, If I'm going to refer to them I ought to at least post the links!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgH4h4KMoGk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0_tfoTTGOQ

[severin]

It isn't anything new to hear about how Americans as a group have their priorities messed up. It is hard for me to get worked up by a commercial (or virtually anything else as I am a severe cynic) so I have a lot of trouble understanding people who get worked up by things that do not have any effect on them or even society as a whole.