Since at least the late 1990’s I’ve had my car and morning-alarm radios locked on WCBS-AM 880. (That’s not counting the 20 months I lived in L.A., when it was KNX-AM 1070.) Whenever anyone asks me where they can find “objective,” “unbiased,” “straight news,” I direct them to WCBS-AM and/or any other all-news radio station (I just personally prefer WCBS to the other local, WINS-AM 1010, which is fine, although the constant old-timey teletype background sound effect can be annoying). Radio news, to me, in this format, is the best way to simply find out what’s happening; the anchors and reporters are veterans with real journalism skills, they have limited time to get the information across, and there’s really no room for editorial commentary or advocacy. It’s as close to “objective,” “unbiased,” “straight news” as one can get — if that’s what one really wants.
But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today.
One of WCBS’s main advertisers, for some time now, is something called “Super Jeweler,” an online discount jewelry store. This morning I was in my car and heard its latest ad, in which the announcer started off saying “I’m using my stimulus check to buy jewelry!” The ad goes on to describe the retailer’s “Stimulus Sale” offering examples of what they’re selling, then saying that everything is so deeply discounted that — and this is a direct quote — “it’s basically free jewelry with government money!!”
When I heard this I couldn’t help but think, This seems wildly inappropriate. For a moment I thought maybe I was hearing a parody ad produced by the RNC or for Tucker Carlson’s show, but as I said, Super Jeweler has been advertising on WCBS for quite some time and its jingle is ubiquitous there (like the “Kars-4-Kids” earworm), so it was clearly a real ad. At a time when so many New Yorkers need those stimulus checks to survive, e.g., to pay bills, pay rent, &c., it struck me as extraordinarily tone deaf for an online jeweler to not only have a so-called “Stimulus Sale” in the first place, but to put an ad on the radio actually encouraging people to use their stimulus checks to buy an expensive frivolity like jewelry instead of necessities like food, medicine, gasoline, clothes for their kids, &c.
But it was the “free jewelry with government money ” remark that made me think this was a Republican campaign ad in disguise, or at least a contribution-in-kind to the RNP. We’ve all heard far too much of that since 2008 (and, really, since 1980, for those of us who’ve been paying attention for that long). I have nothing against Super Jeweler and don’t know if it has a political agenda, or if their ad writers are Fox News watchers or talk radio listeners, so I’m not accusing them of anything; I didn’t complain to their customer-service department because, well, I’m not a customer. But even if there was no agenda or ulterior motive, this was just a terrible, terrible idea.
Before I wrote this diary I reached out to WCBS through their online contact submission form (at Radio.com) and asked that they consider pulling the ad. As I was writing, someone from Entercom (which I guess is Radio.com’s parent company) got right back to me, agreed that the ad (as I described it) seemed tone deaf, and said that (s)he had reached out to the General Sales Manager to find out about it. So, that’s a good sign.
Has anyone else heard this ad, or heard, seen, or read anything like it, on the radio, TV, or in the newspaper? Are other retailers having, or advertising, “Stimulus Sales”? Am I wrong to think that retailers shouldn’t be encouraging consumers to spend stimulus money on luxuries? Or that doing so helps Republicans? Or have I now been sucked into “cancel culture” by registering the above-referenced complaint?