“I hate the gooks,” McCain said yesterday in response to a question from reporters aboard his campaign bus. “I will hate them as long as I live.”
Later, he clarified, saying that he was only talking about the individuals that imprisoned and tortured him (by itself a reasonable position, IMO – I’d hate them too). But, replace “gooks” with a more familiar ethnic slur, the N-word, for example. Does the clarification get him off the hook ?
Dear Daily Show and Daily Show sponsor, Tanqueray,
You are currently running a commercial set at a cocktail party somewhere elegant, where a piggish man in an ugly sport-jacket is grabbing fat handfuls of cold jumbo shrimp off a buffet table while your spokesman, the fictional (and annoying) “Tony Sinclair”, cautions us to practice moderation: in shrimp, and in the consumption of gin-based cocktails. It’s a fine suggestion: one I would do well to take up. Unfortunately, because you run this commercial at every break, and have been running it for weeks and weeks, I fear I have now begun to associate gin, a spirit I have long enjoyed, with the smell of a pile of cold, boiled, shrimp. This is disgusting enough. But, it gets worse. Since I am also somewhat allergic to shrimp, merely thinking of gin now makes my throat start to swell up ever-so-slightly. My once-fond memories of icy gin and tonics sipped leisurely on the summertime porch now come with EpiPens as a swizzle sticks. I fear I can’t enjoy a G&T without a buddy to rescue me if I should fall over and turn blue. Surely, this can’t be your intent. ? .
So, I ask: please, go back to your ad agency and demand that they create a commercial for you that doesn’t use such a malodorous and anaphalaxis-inducing subject. Maybe something in a pine forest ? Though I am also slightly allergic to Scotch pine, some nice spruce or Douglas fir would be OK. Help me out? Maybe you could even persuade me, a strict Bombay Sapphire man, to try your product, instead of being afraid I might die the next time I have a martini.
Please?