A friend sent me an article on thrillist.com that rated all the Super Bowl ads, and he asked for my comments about them.
 
Though I’ve written TV ads, I’m hardly an expert.  But (and this doesn’t make me an expert either), I’m named after a relative who was an expert.  Really.  Isadore James Wagner, and I’m Robert James Elisberg.  That’s why I always write professionally as “Robert J. Elisberg,” as an homage to him.  He was one of the “pioneers” in using singing commercials on radio.  I have an excellent book on old-time radio, The Big Broadcast, sort of an encyclopedia, which has a section on commercials.  They give about a dozen examples of famous radio jingles, and two of them are his.  (One was used for many decades and even I got to hear it on TV, the “What’ll you have?  Pabst Blue Ribbon” jingle.)  He also gave Studs Terkel his first break on radio – and in Terkel’s two memoirs he always give Iz credit.  When I read an interview with him giving credit to “That adman I.J. Wagner,” I ran to tell my mom, and she said, “Oh, yes, I know.  When Iz died, Studs spoke at his funeral.”
 
A story about him and advertising which in a way relates to commenting on Super Bowl ads.  Years back I was talking with an elderly screenwriter, David P. Lewis, who used to write ads in Chicago.  I mentioned having a cousin who did that, I.J. Wagner.  He said he didn’t know him, but worked at the agency where he had worked.  The story is that when he got hired there, he was a know-it-all kid, and when he was told that one of their clients was Thomas J. Webb Coffee (very big in the Midwest at the time), and one of Iz’s big ads, David said he went on a know-it-all rant about how he hated the ad because it was so annoying.  The supervisor went and got a rate book and let him read it – it showed that the ad was WILDLY successful and incredibly well-remembered.  The point being, he realized, that you’re not writing art but trying to get the public to remember your product and then buy it.
 
(The ad – not one of his singing jingles -- was an annoying woman’s raspy voice calling out, “Morrrrrtimer!!  Don’t forget to get the Thomas J. Webb Cofffffffff-eeeeeeeee!!!!”)
 
Before I looked at what Thrillist wrote, I passed along my two favorites.  (I should add that I didn’t think most of the ads were all that wonderful, and there were the only two which, for me, leaped out.  I liked others, but in fairness I didn't see all the ads, and the ones I did see didn’t strike me as great ads, just sort of fun.)  My favorites were --
 
The NFL ad, promoting the upcoming documentary on the history of the NFL.  It wasn’t really a “product” and didn’t make the point of what it was promoting all that great, but I just loved the ad.
 
The Microsoft ad for its usability features for disabled kids.
 
As a special mention, I liked the ad for Bubly soft drink with Michael Buble.
 
As for the Thrillist article, you can check it out here -- which has the added advantage of embedding all the commercials so you can watch the ones you missed list or check out those you did like again.  My own comments aren't comprehensive, so I just skimmed the article, but these are my random thoughts, following the Thrillist order from worst to best.
 
And first of those is that their comments seem to be that if a commercial isn’t all that funny it should be downgraded.  While I understand that to a degree if a commercial is trying to be funny, they seem to miss that the point of a commercial isn’t to be funny but…to sell a product.  And sometimes being “too” funny is felt to detract from the product.

While they rated the Jason Bateman/Hyundai commercial as the worst, I thought it was wonderfully produced and great fun.  However, I think it was a lousy ad for selling their cars.  (In fact, I didn’t remember if it was for Hyundai or Honda.)  So, I don’t know if that should make it it high on the list or low -- but definitely higher than "worst."
 
Their comment about how one of the reasons they didn't like the WeatherTech ad was because they felt the cellphone holider should be higher so that you could actually see the phone was idiotic.  The whole point of the product is that so you keep your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.  NO, they don’t want you looking at the phone.
 
I like the Stella Artois ad, though because I've never seen Sex in the City, and don't think I've seen The Big Lebowski in 15-20 years, I didn't quite get all the references, but I thought it was well-done and fun.  And think that Thrillist missed the point of why it worked. And I liked, too, the quick but great use of "The Most Interesting Man in the World" -- not just because it was a nice addition and a tweak to another beer company, Dos Equis, but I suspect there was a bit of joyful comeuppance by the actor, Jonathan Goldsmith, who had been let go by the ad agency for being too old.

I didn't think the Pepsi ad with Steve Carell ad was all that effective in selling the product especially well, but I thought he was great fun in it.

Though I don’t watch Game of Thrones, I thought the Bud Light crossover ad with the TV show.  was AWFUL.  Not just because the two styles didn’t mesh, but Budweiser thought it was a great idea to have one of its iconic characters, the Bud Knight, get killed in a battle and then decapitated.  Seriously????
 
I thought the Alexa ad was well-produced and fun, but thought it lost its focus on what it was selling.  What I think they were trying to sell was how great and versatile Alexa is, and that it can do SO much, though some efforts were misguided because Alexa shouldn’t be used for that.  A good point in theory, but it doesn’t come through properly, instead it looks like they’re saying Alexa doesn’t work well.
 
How weird that they describe the Mr. Peanut ad as “it’s all pretty stupid,” but rate it as #15.
 
I dislike the Verizon ads that have been running for the last few weeks – with the First Responders, and the tag line about how “They save everyone, and we make sure they got the call.”  The ads themselves are good – but I hate the tag line.  If the ad was the same and they ended with “Verizon salutes those who put themselves out to save others,” then that would be just fine.  But to suggest that Verizon deserves to be part of the First Responder “team” and deserves part of the praise and thanks, simply because they connect the phone call is bothersome.  Furthers, as far as I know, there isn’t an issue with any other service not being able to connect to 911 and First Responders.  Besides which, how do we know that in these cases the call to the First Responders was made using Verizon service??  Maybe it was, but maybe not.  Either way, though, they are NOT part of the team.
 
I can’t say that that Bo Jackson commercial for Sprint was very good, and they even say so, too, yet make it #11 best simply because they like seeing Bo Jackson!
 
Thrillist saying that “Obviously, it’s hard to get too outraged over a clip of Andy Warhol eating a burger” misuses the word “outraged.”  I thought the ad was fairly effective in getting your attention, which is a critical aspect of any ad, though I can assure you there were people at our group who were indeed close to outraged by it, thinking it boring, a bit creepy and inexplicable.  But at least them making it #4 made my point to those “outraged” folks that the ad was effective in getting attention and being remembered.
 
Okay, two of my favorite three made their top three, so I can’t complain about that – the Microsoft ad and the one for Bubly.  Though I wouldn’t have put the Bubly ad #1.  But – but – they completely ignored and left out the NFL promotional spot.  Perhaps because it was just a “promotion” and not a tradition ad per se, but so what?  It was great.  And even if one didn’t like it, you at least include it!!!
 
And that they thought the avocado ad was the second best is bizarre.  Among other things, it didn’t do much to sell avocados (focusing mostly on the unrelated, goofy antics of the humans) …which is the point of an ad.
 
Well, it’s all personal taste.  And I admire that Thrillist took the leap to rate them all in order.
 
 
 
 
I think your recommended tag line for the Bob Dylan “Blowin’ in the Wind” ad is a perfectly good one for commenting on Dylan’s song, but not an especially good one for selling the product.

I swear this is true.

Between 1941-1943, Theodore Geisel was an editorial cartoonist for a publication called PM.  During that period, he drew over 400 political cartoons, using his pen name, 'Dr. Seuss," Later, of course he became a beloved author and illustrator of children's books.

This is one of his actual editorial cartoons from 75 years ago. It's not just the caption that is so eye-catching today, but all the prescient, identifying detail.
​

I like The Rachel Maddow Show a lot.  I watch it most days.  I think she not only does very good work, but but often great, important work.  I do tend to record it so that I can fast-forward through the parts she's reported before, or through the long history lessons she's given that I know, or the repeating of a point four times to make sure you get it.  I understand her doing that, and I'm okay with it -- but that doesn't mean I have to listen to it regularly, which is why God invented the fast-forward button.

But every once she goes off the rails.  And last night was one of those.

With ALL the news stories to cover today -- the 11 murders at the Pittsburgh synagogue, the 14 pipe bombs that got mailed, the two murders at a grocery store when the killer couldn't get in a black church, Trump trying to claim he could sign a racist executive order to rewrite the Constitution, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi which Turkish authorities expanded that day, the 400 immigrant children still separated from their parents, and much, much, much more -- and it being only week before the mid-term elections, I thought it was irresponsible of the show last night to spend 23 MINUTES on their LEAD STORY being about Dodge City, Kansas voter suppression, which largely repeated an story she's been covering repeatedly for the past week.

Some added perspective.  A one-hour primetime TV show has about 44 minutes of content.  For a news show on MSNBC, it might be different.  But that's the ballpark.  So, that means that when you open with a 23-minute segment, that's not a-third of your hour show...it's HALF.  Half of The Rachel Maddow Show was devoted to a lead story they've covered repeatedly for the past week and even longer.

It's not that it wasn't a good story or an important one.  It's significant  But this wasn't a breaking story, which is what you generally have as the lead -- they'd covered the story regularly all week. It wasn't even particularly an extension of the story with significant new details, which also generally justifies sometime being a lead story.  In fact, If they wanted to give the story another 23 minutes and put it on later in the broadcast -- that would have been too much, but really okay.  Indeed, if they wanted it to be the lead story -- that would be fine, too, but for 10 minutes for anything that was new to report. But...not 23 MINUTES as the lead story they've covered repeatedly -- and with SO MUCH else going on, especially as the election date nears...including other major stories of voter suppression, not just in a town with 27,000 people but like in the entire state of Georgia, North Dakota and Indiana, for starters.

And I suspect because they devoted SO much landscape as their lead story last night, they'll feel compelled to give it even more precious air time tonight, with a long follow-up.  And beyond.

It's a good story.  It's an important story.  But this was out of perspective.

You likely saw the "news" story where "Fox News" bizarrely seemed to try to shame actor Geoffrey Owens -- who appeared on The Bill Cosby Show for seven years -- for now working at a Trader Joe's grocery store.  Even at face value, it was a bizarre thing to write about for many reasons, the most basic being obvious:  slamming someone for having a job just seems weird and nasty.  And picking on Geoffrey Owens seems especially odd.  Though it was good to see a lot of people noting on social media that what he's doing now is far superior to the star of the show he was on.

How aghast was social media at the unfairness of the "Fox News" article?  Not only were liberals and several "Hollywood actors" like Blair Underwood and Justine Bateman outraged at "Fox News" but I saw angry tweets from such far right voices as actor James Woods and Dana Loesch, spokeswoman for the NRA (and one-time aspiring actress) taking "Fox News" to task, as well.

All that aside, there's something else very notably to make clear --

What the "Fox News" story important leaves out is that Geoffrey Owens is STILL an ACTIVE working actor -- and simply checking the iMDB.com movie database would make that incredibly clear. It's not that he's been acting on and off for a while -- rather, he has seven TV and movie credits the past two years alone, including a role this season on the CBS series, Elementary.   Indeed, he was worked steadily in films and TV every year for the past 12 years (with one exception in 2012).  So, while it would be perfectly fine if he had gotten out of acting and just wanted a nice job at a good company to make a living and get health care and personal respect, in fact that's not the case at all -- he has an an impressively long career as an actor that goes back to 1985.  And "Fox News" didn't even bother to browse to his credits, which would have taken about 15 seconds.  In fact, given his long career and seven seasons on a hit series, it's likely that he has been successful enough to have been vested in the Screen Actors Guild health care program.  And so, he probably doesn't need the health care from Trader Joe's.  He just wants the work and salary.  Horrors! 

(And since he lives in New York, this doesn't include any of the stage work he might have been doing there over the years, as well.  I've read one story from a local school, too, that explained how he comes in to teach acting there on occasion, which they wouldn't be able to offer otherwise.  Another story was a reminiscence from someone of  "An act of kindness. Twenty-two years ago while I was in college, #GeoffreyOwens and his wife found out that I didn't have enough food to eat. I hardly knew them. They bought me bags of groceries and hugged me as I cried - shocked by their kindness. A hero stands tall anywhere.")

The reality is, for most actors, except those lucky few who become stars or who break through as supporting performers, jobs don't come regularly, so the option is to do nothing during your downtime (which can be months because jobs, even half a year) or stay busy with other work.  So, in other words, this break news "story" from "Fox News" is that a journeyman actor with a 33-year career has a has a second job to keep him busy and provide income.

I should also note that he picked a very nice company to work at.  I've been a huge admirer of Trader Joe's and shopper there for probably 40 years, when they were just a West Coast company, with most of their stores in Los Angeles.  And Joe Coulombe was still the owner, and did their radio ads himself.  There's a Trader Joe's about half a mile from where I live, and I pass it maybe four times a week on my morning constitutional -- I probably stop in once a week.  They're employees tend to be very friendly and incredibly helpful, and seem to actually like working there, so it makes all the more foolish to try to "shame" someone for doing so.  I suspect they have a long waiting list of job applicants and are very selective who they hire.

Today's Labor Day, so I won't head over, but I'll make sure to stop in on Tuesday, just on general principle to offer my support.  I really only have one quibble with Trader Joe's.  And it's not really a quibble at all, just a caveat --

I have a very nice Hawaiian shirt that my friend Deborah (who's from Honolulu) bought me several years back.  And I have to be incredibly careful NOT to wear it when I know I'm going to shop at Trader Joe's.  If you shop there, you know what I mean and where this is going.  One day I was wearing the shirt and browsing around the store -- and every five minutes, some customer would come up to me and ask for help.  I didn't mind explaining that, no, I wasn't an employee, I was just wearing my own Hawaiian shirt, but I felt bad for the people asking who always so embarrassed that they had confused my Hawaiian shirt with those of the store.  So, there have literally been times when I've gotten dressed in the morning, and then remembered I was going to be shopping at Trader Joe's that day and quickly changed shirts.

Other than that -- and that they periodically drop carrying favorite items of mine -- I think Trader Joe's is a terrific store.  And lest they get smeared, as well, for being a demeaning place to work, it's important to know that the very opposite it true.

On the positive side, I wouldn't be surprised if Geoffrey Owens gets a lot of positive notice from this story, bringing his name to the attention of casting directors who are inundated daily with piles of actors' resumes to try and sort through to figure out which lucky few will get to audition for producers -- and who know how monumentally unfair this "Fox News" smear was and may want to do right by him to correct that wrong.

One of the most difficult things for any career actor is to stay visible so that they get those auditions and stay in the eye of casting directors and producers.  It's my hope that the attempt by "Fox News" to meaningless "shame" someone living under the wire and out of the spotlight, like pretty much everyone in the world, backfires in a big way and ends up getting an actor more work than he would have had otherwise.  But at the very least, it's nice that it has brought out stories about what a good guy the fellow is.

Boy, it took a LONG time for Trump to make a public statement about this.  A full day.  (Tweets don't count, but even that was delayed. 

Of course, his words here raise some related questions.  If as Trump says, the press "should be free from the fear of being violently attacked", will he stop calling them "enemy of the people"?  Will he stop attacking them at his rallies where his vitriol is so vicious that reporters in attendance require protection? Will he stop calling every criticism from the press "fake news."  Because otherwise, if not, his words today are meaningless and empty.

Actually, even with that, his words here are meaningless and empty.  It would certainly help, but to show that his words have actual substance requires dealing with his past attacks directly and acknowledging that they were wrong and harmful, and that his supporters should not hold on to them.  The damage is done, and to repair it requires triage and open heart surgery, not a bandage.

Like most people, I'm sure, I much dislike "clickbait" headlines.  Raw Story, a news website I particularly like, is a big exponent of such things, its only flaw.  But I was surprised to see the excellent tech site, CNET jump in.

Yesterday, I got the daily CNET newsletter I subscribe to.  It always includes links to a number of stories, with the main story being the email's subject line.  And this one a subject line headline that shouted out -- "The death of cash may finally be coming."  I doubted that, but still I was curious what they had to say about the technology.  And also what the other stories they were covering that day.

Fortunately, I didn't have to click through the clickbait link to the actual article, because the newsletter had a sub-heading underneath those glaring words, "The death of cash may finally be coming."  

The sub-headline was --

"E-commerce and mobile money may in the coming years take a bite out of cash's strength in the payments world. But it won't be easy."

Color me contrarian, but to me -- "may take a bite out of..." and "It won't be easy" seems to mean that, no, the death of cash may finally be coming.

I've liked David Cay Johnston when I only knew of him writing about taxes and winning a Pulitzer Prize. It was remarkable how he made such arcane minutiae and otherwise seemingly-boring material so fascinating and understandable.  I had no idea at the time that he'd been covering Trump for over 30 years. In fact, he now has written two books on Trump.  So, it was notable the in a long interview with him on Salon, conducted by Chauncey DeVega, he commented --

"Let me be very clear and quotable about this. At an absolute minimum, Donald Trump has divided loyalties, and the evidence we already have suggests that Donald Trump is a traitor. In fact, I would say that the evidence we already have, the public materials such as emails for example, strongly indicate that Donald Trump is a traitor. However, I don’t even think he understands what he’s done."

I've been running around the last few days, so Ii haven't had much time to catch up in detail on all the news.  As best I can tell, there is a lot of meltdown and angst around TrumpWorld and in the GOP.  The most galling story, yet one which hasn't received much press attention, is that Trump's Inspector General has sent his findings -- that former acting FBI-director Andrew McCabe was "less than candid" with the FBI -- to the Department of Justice for possible criminal charges.  From what little I've read, it seems unlikely that criminal charges will actually be filed.  But -- 1) they could be, 2) what a chilling effect it must have on the entire department, and 3) what a fascist thing to do, try to undermine other voices of authority.

I also saw that Trump was dancing little jigs about the release of the FBI's Comey memos -- despite the reality that the memos pretty clearly support Comey and show Trump to be a pathetic sleazeball.  All that without even getting into the fact that the memos should never have been released because they were evidence in an ongoing FBI investigation, but several top Republicans in the complicit House put on their fascist hats and were whining and bellowing for the documents.

And more, and more.

But what stood out to me among them all was, in most ways, a lesser story.  But one that is utterly fascinating and especially telling about Trump.  It was a long, detailed and very readable article in the Washington Post by Jonathan Greenberg.  He is a reporter who back in the 1980s worked for Forbes magazine and was involved with putting together the initial "Forbes 400" lists of the wealthiest Americans.  And the title of the article says it all -- "Trump lied to me about his wealth to get onto the Forbes 400.  Here are the tapes."

What's so notable about the article is that many of the relentless specifics come from off-the-record conversations that Greenberg had, many with Trump himself posing under one of his pseudonyms of "John Barron," as well as conversations with Trump's lawyer and mentor, the disgraced Roy Cohn.  However, Greenberg feels comfortable revealing this conversations because, as he writes -- "Although Trump, posing as Barron, asked Forbes to conduct the conversation off the record, I am publishing it here. I believe an intent to deceive — both with the made-up persona and the content of the call — released me from my good-faith pledge."

But the most notable thing about the article is, as the headline of the piece notes -- the tapes.  Greenberg recorded many of the conversations with both Trump and Cohn, and has embedded them here.  So, you can now hear Trump as "John Barron" clear as day, and lying through every orifice and body part.  And it's blatantly Trump. Even from the distance of time, and him putting on a thicker New York accent, it's Trump.  Clear as a glass window.

Even if you don't read the whole article, at least listen to the tapes.  And in the end, what this article does is demonstrate -- in text and audio -- the beginnings of Trump's public flim-flam to try to con the American public about himself.

If Sean Hannity was smart he'd have taken one for the team.  I'm not saying he should have (honesty indeed is always the best policy, especially in court and on TV news), but just that if the he was really the team player I'm sure he likes to consider himself, then falling on his sword would have saved a lot of headaches for a whole lot of people, including Trump.  That's because the entire point behind the question of who are Michael Cohen's clients is to determine if he actually is functioning as a lawyer, and if not then he can't claim attorney-client privilege for the material seized from his office, home and hotel.  And so, if he wasn't actually an attorney for Sean Hannity, then that leaves him with only two supposed-clients.  One of those is Elliott Broidy, the RNC co-chair for whom Cohen only acted (as far as we know) to facilitate a hush money payoff, hardly a job necessary for a lawyer.  You can get any high or low-level thug to carry that out.  Which leaves only Trump.  That's not much of a law practice.  Mind you, it could be a full-time job for a lawyer, handling all the fraud lawsuits.  Though Cohen didn't handle those.

By the way, to be clear, it's not critical to the government to show that Cohen wasn't acting as a lawyer for the evidence to be seized.  Even an actual lawyer can't hide behind attorney-client privilege if he or she is engaged in criminal activity with the client.  And the federal agents had enough reasonable proof of that to convince a judge to sign off on the raid.

Honestly, I have zero idea of Michael Cohen was acting as a lawyer for Sean Hannity.  I do know that if he wasn't then Cohen's own lawyer is in a mess o' trouble for claiming it in open court.  Judges -- and the legal system -- don't like that.  I also know that even if Cohen wasn't acting as Hannity's attorney there's something in their dealings that someone (whether Hannity or Cohen) doesn't want to see the light of day.  Otherwise, why on earth claim attorney-client privilege and argue in court for 20 minutes for it, except to keep it protected?  The bottom line in all this is that someone is lying.

The thing is, there's one question in all this (well, okay, I'm sure there are a lot more questions than just "one") that I haven't heard asked of Hannity.   And that's, "Are you telling us that you don't have your own attorney that you couldn't have called to ask a very minor question about 'real estate' to???"  Because that's not believable for a second.  And the alternative is that his answer would be, "Oh, sure I have an attorney, but I didn't want to bother him with a really minor 'real estate' question and waste his time, and instead just figured I'd ask the personal lawyer for the president of the United States."

For all this, the most amusing thing has been to see Sean Hannity squealing like a stuck pig and making all manner of claims about the unfair press.  The proper response, of course, is much simpler.  It's "I was not a client of Michael Cohen's and only asked him a simple question about 'real estate,' but I should have disclosed even that to remove even the slightest hint of impropriety, and I'm sorry."

But instead, he's whining about "the press" and fairness, a concept that never seems to have concerned him before.  And again, claiming he wasn't a client -- if true -- hurts Trump, Michael Cohen, and Cohen's lawyer, so this is a no-win situation all around.  Unless Hannity took one for the team.  After all, it's not like his employers would have likely cared.

That's because the funniest response of all has been from "Fox News" whose comment after looking into all this was basically, "Yes, Sean was wrong, but that's okay, we don't mind.  Carry on"  And why should they? Only an actual news organization would care about journalistic ethics...