Ever since that extremely brief moment in time when Janet Jackson’s breast was exposed during her halftime show at the 2004 Super Bowl — a moment that most people missed in real time — another audience has joined the multitudes in watching America’s biggest sports and advertising extravaganza:
Those who would be offended.
It’s tradition now (or cliché, you make the call) for people to say they watch the game for the commercials. And that often the ads are more entertaining than the game, etc. Everyone knows that companies spend millions on their Super Bowl ads, and it’s a competition to come up with the most creative, memorable, talked-about ad of the game. Toward that end, the ad creators often take risks to stand out. Some succeed, some don’t. And when they don’t succeed, it’s usually because an attempt at humor failed. And that means someone is offended.
This year the National Organization for Women plans to conduct its Super Bowl Ad Watch, as it did in 2003. Hundreds of NOW chapters will be asked to rate the Super Bowl ads most demeaning to women. The “winners” will be posted on NOW’s Web site.
“If there’s an offensive ad, we’ll gang up on the advertiser,” Kim Gandy, NOW’s president told USA Today.
What NOW and other advocacy groups don’t seem to understand is that companies really aren’t trying to offend them with their commercials. Not when an average 30-second Super Bowl spot will cost $2.7 million. They do not want to yank a commercial completely, as did General Motors and Mars, the maker of Snickers candy bars, after last year’s game.
Gay advocacy groups protested the Snickers ad, which featured two auto mechanics who accidentally kiss while munching on opposite ends of a Snickers bar. They react by screaming and displaying their manliness by pulling out their chest hair. The groups complained and the ads were pulled. Mars representatives met with the group and reiterated that they never meant to offend anyone.
And we’d bet a billion candy bars that the ad’s creators were making fun of homophobes, not homosexuals.
Life is too short to watch a four-hour spectacle on TV just to make sure nothing offends you. Life and TV are full of offensive things, especially when we look to be offended. As they say, free speech is messy. Bad taste is protected.
Equally, people have the right protest anything they want. But as Hubert H. Humphrey said, “The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.”
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