Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Stop Snicker(s)ing or Don’t Get MADD get GLAAD

While I am pleased that GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) got those terrible Snickers ads off the air and Internet, I am more than a bit distressed by the whole affair.

I didn’t watch the Super Bowl last Sunday because I don’t like to watch giant hulking sweating grunting men pile on top of one another in some obscene parody of Lynndie England's patriotic photos at Abu Ghraib. But it seems that the good people of GLAAD do watch and did us all a favor by attacking these ads.

If you didn’t see it on TV (or the different versions of it) on the Internet, the ad features two giant hulking sweating grunting men working on a truck. One whips out his Snickers and starts to suck it into his mouth hands-free. His coworker, obviously driven by a deep-seated hunger for a chocolate, caramel and peanut phallus-shaped concoction began sucking in the other end.

Just like the clearly heterosexual dogs sucking a single strand of spaghetti in the Disney classic Lady and the Tramp, our two giant hulking sweating grunting men end up kissing. Disgusted by their sudden moment of intimacy and clearly doubting whether real men suck Snickers, they leap apart and seek to prove their hetero-hood by ripping out their chest hair or, in the versions on the Internet, beating themselves with wrenches and truck hoods like Click and Clack if the Tappit Brothers were Opus Dei or Shi’ite flagellants.

Now you may not be bothered by two giant hulking sweating grunting men sucking on a single Snickers bar but GLAAD people are and they got the candy company to cancel the ad. Good for them. I personally love Snickers but I have to admit I will never ever be able to eat one again with engaging in of some homoerotic fantasy, something that usually only happens when I eat Three Musketeers bars.

I’m serious— these ads have ruined Snickers bars for me. In fact now I’m skittish about eating any candy bar whose shape reminds me either of spaghetti (and hence bestiality) or a penis.

To check out my new phobia I went to a series of grocery and drug stores to buy one or another chocolate bar in the hitherto mentioned shapes. Just walking down the isle made be queasy. I started to swagger and talk like John Wayne just to make sure no one thought I was gay or GLAAD or even happy to be there.

Yet I love chocolate. At first I thought I could take refuge in M&Ms but that “melts in your mouth and not in your hand” slogan is now taboo. What to do? With a little careful searching I found Godiva Chocolate, and there is nothing that says heterosexual more than eating Godiva. Unless you are a lesbian. Damn!

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