Okay, so I don't expect anyone to read this, but I just need to vent.
As I'm sitting here on the computer, waiting for the spouse to come home so we can go grocery shopping, I have ESPNNews on in the background. Mostly it's innocuous -- Nicklaus retiring after the British Open, Ohio State facing some serious penalties, that sort of thing -- but of course, in the midst of the news, there's commercials.
I'm usually able to shrug off commercials -- I'm sick of the David Spade Capital One spots, I'm still mildly entertained by the Geico gecko (though his human companion is an ass), and overall I tune them out. But there was one that absolutely infuriated me.
I've never had a problem with alcohol, but I know many who have. A cousin died
waaaay too damn early because he drank and drugged himself to death. And there are many fine Kossacks that are fighting and winning the battle of the bottle, and I admire and salute them.
So it was with a mixture of horror and disgust that I saw the commercial for Red Stripe Beer.
You can watch their commercials for yourself on the website, but basically it's a guy who is allegedly Jamaican (it's a Jamaican beer), in a bar with an average looking guy. He starts out by saying, "I am standing here with an ugly person!" then hands him the beer and says, "Look how much better he looks now!" Implying, of course, that beer makes you look better.
To have this commercial on a TV network that attracts young men is particularly brutal because of an incident that happened early yesterday morning (registration required). From the article:
Charles Marlo Jenkins III, once a gifted running back for Palo Alto's Gunn High School, died after a violent, high-speed crash early Sunday morning.
Nearly a year after graduating from Gunn, Jenkins, 19, was driving north on Middlefield Road about 100 mph when he lost control of the car. He was ejected from the vehicle; a friend from East Palo Alto riding with him was in critical condition.
Palo Alto police said the horrific accident occurred shortly before 4 a.m., and that paramedics on the scene believe alcohol was a factor. Jenkins died at Stanford University Hospital a few hours after paramedics had replaced at least 20 pints of blood.
<...>
Holding three graphic photographs of the accident scene, Sgt. Dan Ryan described how Palo Alto police investigators put the sequence of the accident together.
He said police believe the two young men had left a party in Palo Alto to visit a Gunn alumnus who had turned 21. Jenkins was driving the black Passat north on Middlefield Road at an estimated 100 mph when they hit a bump, or a rise in the road.
``They were going so fast,'' said Ryan, ``the car flew into the air about 100 feet.''
The car returned to the ground and bounced up again, Ryan said, and swerved toward a parking lot at the Safeway at 2811 Middlefield Road. Still traveling at a high speed, according to Ryan, the car hit a signpost and tree and then slid sideways across the top of a 3-foot-tall brick wall between a sidewalk and the parking lot.
I don't know the victim or his passenger, but I know the neighborhood -- very well. I mostly grew up in that neighborhood. It's a very small retail area, known as Midtown -- a Safeway, 7-11, a couple of drug stores, a Starbucks, a great independent coffee place, and assorted other businesses. Other than that, it's pretty much residential. The in-laws live closeby; when I saw a shot of the accident, I saw a bashed-in van that looked very much like the Odyssey my parents-in-law own. Another angle revealed the license plate, and I didn't see the disabled symbol so I knew it wasn't theirs.
It's only dumb luck that the driver didn't take out some pedestrian out walking their dog before leaving for work, or a clerk making minimum wage heading for early morning stocking duties at the store. And all because of alcohol, the desire to be cool and tough and adult.
I'm tempted to write a letter to the company, but I don't know if it'll do any good. I know one thing though: I'm never drinking any fucking Red Stripe Beer.
Here endeth the rant...