{"id":57411,"date":"2016-02-05T11:30:55","date_gmt":"2016-02-05T17:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57411"},"modified":"2017-04-21T10:38:15","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T15:38:15","slug":"help-me-out-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57411","title":{"rendered":"Help Me Out Here"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To: \u00a0Colgate<br \/>\nFrom: \u00a0Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant<br \/>\nRe: \u00a0Your Super Bowl Ad<\/p>\n<p>Colgate,<\/p>\n<p>So I watched the teaser for your Super Bowl spot:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IS4lGnGfHTw\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I get it. \u00a0There&#8217;s big money in appealing to the altruism of the soft-core social justice warrior. \u00a0There&#8217;s a whole generation of Millennials out there who are impressed by symbols.<\/p>\n<p>And I am not one of the people who &#8220;wastes&#8221; water like the guy in the ad. \u00a0I&#8217;m way too frugal for that.<\/p>\n<p>But I have a question. \u00a0Several, actually:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>If I\u00a0<em>did\u00a0<\/em>leave the faucet running, what do you think would happen (other than inflating my water bill)? \u00a0 Would the water disappear from the face of the earth, never to be seen again? \u00a0 \u00a0Of course not; it runs down the drain, through the sanitary sewer, back to sewage plant and a holding pond, where it evaporates, turning into humidity, clouds, and eventually rain or snow, falling&#8230;somewhere in the world, usually to repeat the cycle over and over and over.<\/li>\n<li>For that matter, what do you think happens to the water I drink? \u00a0That it disappears from the earth for good? \u00a0No &#8211; it comes back out in one form or another; #1, #2, sweat, tears, spittle, whatever. \u00a0It eventually gets back to the environment, where it evaporates and becomes humidity, clouds, fog, snow, rain, ice, glaciers, or\u00a0<em>something<\/em>. \u00a0And then repeats the cycle, over and over again.<\/li>\n<li>You end the ad with a young, ethnically-ambiguous\u00a0girl (Asian? Central American? \u00a0Briilliant casting, actually) thirstily and heart-rendingly slurping up every drop of the &#8220;wasted&#8221; water she can get her hands, literally, around. \u00a0Now, I live in a part of the world blessed with a\u00a0<em>lot\u00a0<\/em>of water. \u00a0My city water comes from the Mississippi River. \u00a0And any water I don&#8217;t physically consume eventually probably gets back there, or seeps down into an aquifer, or evaporates back into the atmosphere to go heaven-only-knows where. \u00a0So please tell me; if I\u00a0<em>don&#8217;t\u00a0<\/em>use a gallon of water, how do you propose that it gets to that little girl in Myanmar or Honduras? \u00a0Can I pack it up in a jug and send it there, with Colgate paying the freight? Will you be holding a water drive? \u00a0How is my use of water &#8211; which, between nature and a government that handles basic services with some degree of competence, is plentiful where I live &#8211; related to the availability of water in a third-world hellhole beset by banana-republic\u00a0socialists, corruption and incompetence? \u00a0 Can the water I don&#8217;t use be re-purposed to\u00a0<em>drowning the successive waves of dictators\u00a0<\/em>that have managed to make places like the little girl&#8217;s hometown short of water, even though they&#8217;re\u00a0<em>by a freaking rain forest<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Thanks in advance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To: \u00a0Colgate From: \u00a0Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant Re: \u00a0Your Super Bowl Ad Colgate, So I watched the teaser for your Super Bowl spot: I get it. \u00a0There&#8217;s big money in appealing to the altruism of the soft-core social justice warrior. \u00a0There&#8217;s a whole generation of Millennials out there who are impressed by symbols. And I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,4,374,77],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-57411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-warmingcoolingchange","category-media","category-social-justice","category-the-rare-sports-post","tag-open-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57411"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57424,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57411\/revisions\/57424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}