Respecting the roll and getting more cash

I would like to acknowledge Jay Leno's brilliant deconstruction of the Cottonelle "Respect the Roll" ad campaign on TV. Those ads are practically begging to be nitpicked and lampooned, but Jay Leno has beat me to the punch. The one he chose to focus on is one in which an elderly black couple spies on the bathroom of some neighbors across the street. Why are they spying on their neighbors, why does the neighbors' house have the toilet facing a window, and most importantly of all, how does it show "respect" to a roll of toilet paper to cover it up prior to using it for its ultimate purpose and denouement?

Another ad campaign that deserves a similar treatment is Capital One's "more cash" ad campaign with Jimmy Fallon. Everyone likes more cash, with the exception of a grumpy little baby, who expresses wordlessly how most grown-ups feel about Jimmy Fallon. It's bad enough we make our infant children compete in beauty pageants, now we must expose them to the evil, corrupting power of money as early as possible? But more importantly, and why hasn't this occurred to anyone else:

If you really want more cash, cancel your credit cards! And maybe get rid of your debit cards, too.

So we are supposed to feel grateful that the credit card companies, out of the exorbitant interest rates and fees that they charge us, return to us a tiny, trickling bit of that in the form of what is euphemistically called "cash rewards"? If you are not too ensnared in credit card debt, it is time to pay them all off, cancel them, and keep more of your hard-earned cash where you want it: in your wallet. What exactly have the credit card companies done that they deserve any cut of our hard-earned paychecks? Exactly!

Jay Leno likes gruesome screensavers

So the White House has decided not to release the gruesome photos of Osama bin Laden with bullet holes in his head. Plenty of jokes that could be made there, like maybe alluding to the birth certificate scandal and how some people still refuse to believe that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.

But the 'joke' that Jay Leno chose to make on the Tonight Show last night was this: "How many of you wanted to make that your screensaver?" And he raised his own hand as he asked that. There's no accounting for taste, I suppose. My reaction, if I ever got to see those photos, would be either:

a) "I'm convinced the bastard's dead, I don't need or want to look at that again." OR
b) "That looks fake. Let me look at it again just long enough to find the Photoshop seams."

NOT c) "Ooh, let me look at that guy's ugly face made even uglier by violence every time I leave my computer alone for more than a few minutes!"

Jay Leno: the millionaire's comedian

So Jay Leno for the most part tries to cultivate this image of himself as an average kind of guy. But in his monologue last night on the Tonight Show he showed his true colors as a rich man who has forgotten his humble roots with one unfunny joke that soured me on the rest of the monologue:

Commenting on Obama's remarks to the private sector encouraging them to hire more people, Leno joked "Because only Government hires more people than it needs." If it hadn't been for that joke, I think I might have actually laughed at his later joke about TSA workers unionizing (something about getting patted down at the airport by one TSA worker while a bunch of other TSA workers just stand around watching). I didn't watch "Headlines," I tuned out at the commercial break.

I don't know if Jay Leno is playing dumb about a little concept known as "overwork and underpay" (or, as it's known to the middle class, "overworked and underpaid") or if he's genuinely ignorant about it. But in case he really doesn't know about it, here's how it goes: say your company actually needs 10 men to properly carry out a periodically occurring assignment. What you do is you lay off 5 of those men but you pay the remaining 5 (get ready for this, because it'll knock your socks off) you pay them exactly the same as when they had those other 5 colleagues. If they complain that they can't do the job like this, remind them that you have plenty of willing workers to replace them, if need be show them a couple of boxes just filled with résumés. Maybe Government really is hiring more people than it needs. But with the private sector not hiring as many people as it needs, Government just can't pick up the slack. And then debt collectors wonder why people have fallen behind on their payments. Gee, you don't have a job, and your family members and your friends don't either? Gee, I wonder how that could have happened? We'll take your house and car anyway.

Maybe I would've laughed at the TSA joke on another night. But if I did laugh at a joke about TSA workers unionizing, it would mean that I have forgotten two very important details: one, that TSA workers are federal employees doing their jobs, and two, that without unions, the rich feel free to walk all over the working man without any remorse whatsoever.

And another thing: if Jay Leno had been in Conan O'Brien's shoes, getting laid off from NBC, do you think he would have made any effort to help the laborers also laid off?