I’m sitting here watching the Super Bowl not because I give a rat-ass who wins that game but because I like the commercials. Which brings me to my point my fellow members of the herd, flock, gaggle, murder, warren, etc., we look to these things that cost a record now 2.4 million dollars for 30 seconds of air time and we are led along to some product and subtly ideas too. Oh yes little subliminal things and suggestions about how life should be. I’ll rant in another entry about the evils of advertising but for now I’m going to try to stay on point.

I’ve seen one ad 4 times .. yeah that’s about 10 million dollars CHA-CHING! But most of them you see only once. Well the Budweiser people Anheuser-Busch (A-B) ran an ad during the game which you may have seen … Several American military members come in from we assume – Iraq or Afghanistan and slow the entire Airport bursts into applause while the soldiers, men and women, file through then it fades to black and the simple words THANK YOU appear on the screen. Very sentimental ad, but what are the folks and A-B trying to say here that we should buy the fine folks in the Armed Forces a beer and it would be great if it was a A-B product or are you trying to say something else … oh lets say image or patriotism or maybe something else. Yeah that gentle tug you feel may be your herd master yanking on your nose ring.

Well I’m a bit mixed about this, the members of our military should be looked up to by the non-military citizens among us but why now and not say 40 years ago. When a very similar setting applied to the ad – young military members, men mostly and some women, coming into airports across this land being spit on instead of applauded, having things like baby killer screamed at them and otherwise being told by a public by and large that they were worthless in our society.

Today perhaps we do realize more that the wars our soldiers fight in are not by their choice but those who sit in offices about 300 miles from where I sit this night. Maybe we have grown as a nation while the wars we are in are not widely popular and would say that there are as many now opposed to the current conflicts in which we are engaged as the ones 40 years ago.

I’m not saying that the men and women of our military don’t deserve a thank you, in my opinion they do – they serve willingly and freely so not everyone has to serve. However, I think that to honor the current troops in this manner and especially by the airport scene, does more to further dishonor those who endured scorn, distain and ridicule all those years ago. The ad says without saying it that these soldiers deserve our thanks and you didn’t , Maybe Anheiser Busch should run a similar ad showing the Viet-Nam vets rolling back in to hate and jeers and fade to black and say simply – Sorry please forgive us.

It would be nice but it’s not very likely. Well I’m off my soapbox now, Have a great day and a better tomorrow and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,




Current Invisible Army Mission: November 2004
Write me: Don, PO Box 4425, Roanoke, VA 24015

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