Street Scene
Advertising Disconnect



I'm watching the Cartoon Network (because, after a day at work, I want to watch something that I'm not going to pick the product placements out of by habit, ironic because at the moment I'm watching Transformers, a series designed from the ground up to sell toys) and catch an in-network promo for Naruto. The outgoing tagline is "Naruto: Put Your Lips Together...and Blow."

Now, I've never seen Naruto, but something tells me that it doesn't have all that much, okay anything, to do with Lauren Bacall, and I'm certain that is has absolutely nothing to do with what Bacall had in mind.

It's true that ritualistic battle has a certain...appeal, but raising a generation of sadomasochists seems like a bad way to start the twenty-first century.