Thursday, August 18, 2005
A Hard Pill to Swallow
Here’s a brief up-date on medical media: this guy has had some cosmetic surgery. He used to sell Viagra to our nation’s apparently increasingly floppy and flaccid population. You can see that he’s sporting horn - the “V” behind his head is merely suggested, an optical trick, having been turned into nothing more than knobby protruberances on either side of his cranium. At one time this would have been considered the mark of the cuckhold, but nowadays it’s the mark of the beast - the hot sexy beast who likes to get it on. If you don’t believe me, this story explains that Pfizer, the helpful folk who put the woodie in a little blue pill, have “pulled” (as the marketing mavens put it) an ad that actually showed horns growing out of a guy’s head as he fantasized about sexy panties. At that time, they said that the problem was that the ad implied an increased procreo-recreational drive, which conclusion was not borne out by hard data. But now there’s an even further pullback, or -out, or however these things are denominated: the “V” in the print ads has now elevated itself, proudly and firmly, up above our salacious hero’s head. (Sorry, I can’t find a link this morning, but check any Time Magazine and it’s in a full-page ad.) It’s the same guy, but the word “Viagra” floats above him like an annunciation from on high, and he appears with a freshly horn-shorn head. I’m wondering if the FDA’s argument about insufficent evidence of increased sexual interest was only part of the story. In this ever-more parochial country, I suspect that anything linking drugs with the Dark Lord or other devilish phenomena would be more of a liability than an asset. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I long for the days when a guy sporting horn wasn’t immediately considered to be an emmisary of the underworld. And even if he was, that didn’t necessarily make him a bad guy. Nowadays, horn could get a guy into some serious trouble. I mean, so I’m told. The only thing I’ve got sprouting from my head these days is question marks and exclamation points.
