Victim of an unjust society? Don't forget to say "thank you"

piece I wrote in response to a commercial. Not strictly a story, more an article.

It's not uncommon for corporations to spend millions on advertising during events that draw in the masses. In light of tonight's Superbowl XXIIXX2K etc, I've been motivated from apathy to diet apathy by one shameless ad that beats the lot.

We're all used to being bombarded by advertisements. I accept that they're there after the intro to Storage Wars, then again five minutes later causing me to lose the thread of the narrative (Did Barry sell the shrunken head? Did Hester outbid someone at the last second like the b*****d he is?). Whether it's Maxwell the Geico representative zip-lining all the way home or a teaser for the next episode of Finding Bigfoot (yes, it IS on the Animal Planet), I'm amazed at the lack of impact any of these promotional pigs and teasers have on me (I have nothing worth insuring, and as with God, Santa, and the Robot Devil, I already know Bigfoot exists). There is one ad, however, that has recently caused me to stop and say "hold on, this is a travesty".

It happened while making a cuppa at half time (Newcastle 2-1 Aston Villa). The ad started with a group of scruffy unwashed tattered bairns in a work house scooping up gruel. "Twist" you're thinking. Brilliant. One of the little waifs has the audacity to walk up to the beadle. I was expecting some hilarious unexpected, dare I say it....twist; the kid is going to throw the porridge on the ground and demand a Whopper, and they'll all get a Whopper and it'll be fabulous.

He asks for more. More? More! The beadle is horrified; a gasp goes around the workhouse canteen and all eyes are on the boy. He says "please", and while the beadle saunters into the midst of the boys to make an example of the ungrateful little s**t, the dispenser drops a second splatter of gruel into his plate. Rattled, the beadle turns and gives the dispenser a look that says "oh you b*****d", and he is stopped in his tracks when the dispenser replies, "well he did say please". That got him. He looks up, perplexed. He smiles. He looks at the camera and says "and, he also said 'thank you'". The ad ends with a string quartet playing hallelujah and the words "please and thank you: pass it on" across the screen, which fades to "Values.com: the foundation for a better life".

What is wrong with this advert? Besides the fact that it reeks of smuggery, it leaves too much wiggle room for interpretation. To the desensitized pig watching sloth, the ad is funny because it reminds us of Dickens, the Englishman what wrote books about people with letter box mouths and made the poor funny. To the more astute pig watching sloth, the ad has some darker implications. Forget the strings and the bum touching at the end. The message that I took from this was that the poor should not ask for more and they should be polite when they're not doing it. Greedy poor, I was thinking, they're lucky they get gruel in the first place, no matter how watered down. So what if Mr. Bumble the beadle enjoys wealth at the expense of the less fortunate, and who cares if he indulges in the odd "wery fortifying gin, for one's health, of course." Didn't he earn it by being born into a higher class? Course he did. In a society that is increasingly upset with the top 0.01% of the population having 120% of the total society's wealth, it shows a lack of tact on the part of www.values.com to release an advert that can be interpreted (albeit cynically, and by an idiot) as a right wing pull-your-socks-up get-on-your-bike piece of propaganda. Is this overkill on my part? Is it wrong to interpret the reinforcing of "values" and manners in the impoverished as an oh so subtle "thumbs up" to Republican values, and a not so subtle message to the poor that there's no need to be impolite just because you're the victim of an unjust society that sees you as a beggar just because you lacked the support and opportunity that a large portion of society is fortunate enough to have had.

After looking for proof that I had overreacted, I came across a section on the values.com website titled "equality". It was a quote from Nietzsche, which ran: "The craving for equality can express itself either as a desire to pull everyone down to our own level or as a desire to raise ourselves up along with everyone else." Forget the fact that the odds are stacked against you and that you have little chance at paying rent when a "hard-working" few are able to own ivory yachts. You have to raise yourselves up, they say, to achieve equality and a just society. It's that simple.

Inequality. Don't fight it. Smile, and for Bigfoot's sake, say "thank you".