Derek Bodner’s Blog

Heard a commercial the other day that basically poked fun at suicide. The commercial started off that this person was going to jump off a bridge. Somebody came to talk her off the ledge, and rattled off things she should be happy about. They went over things like marriage, job, etc, with the women’s responses being things like “just got laid off, just got divorced, etc”. Out of desperation the person says “car?”, and she goes into this big happy speech about the car she just got, and steps back off the ledge and doesn’t jump.

I want to get this out of the way. I do not personally find this offensive. What I do find offensive is the double standard on what is “ruining children” or “desensitizing children”. We have “shock jocks” (who’s job it is to push the edge to make people laugh) getting kicked off the air almost daily. Jesus Christ, we had a huge, national incident involving a breast in the superbowl that made us the laughing stock of the world. A BREAST. Video games are constantly desensitizing todays youth (despite the fact that violent crimes among teens is plummeting). So in otherwords, you can’t see a breast on tv, or see a pixelated cartoon hit someone, but you can joke about suicide in order to sell an automobile.

Wonderful world we live on.