I was a little unprepared. The commercial came on and I heard the familiar ukulele strums of the late Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's famous and famously beautiful version of "Over the Rainbow" (I know, but it really is quite lovely) and my first reaction was merely to cringe and wince as yet another exquisite and plaintive song was whored out to the advertising demons, just one of thousands.
But then came the barrage of images: the requisite shot of the Perfect Mom feeding her Perfect Child some sort of Perfect Food, all bathed in soft morning breakfast-sy light with happy trees peeking through the windows of the Perfect Kitchen in some utopian hunk of Perfect America, a bizarre scene that of course does not exist anywhere on this planet given how there weren't three empty wine bottles and some used underwear and a stack of dirty dishes and a fresh bottle of Xanax and an open newspaper offering up giant headlines about murders and nuclear warheads and Korean sex slaves anywhere in sight.
And then it happened. The logo. The product shot. The soothing voice-over. It was a commercial for a brand-new product: Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. And your heart goes, Ugh.
You say it aloud and the words tend to catch in your throat and make you sort of gag. Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies, with "organic" in big scripted flowing font across the top of the box, all steeped in bogus warmth and happiness and false notions of health and nature and protecting your Perfect Child from the millions of icky poisons and unhealthy crap churned out by giant megacorps exactly like, well, exactly like Kellogg's.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2006/10/13/notes101306.DTL&type=printable