SHOCKVERTISING

Everday on my commute into Dallas I have to pass a billboard with a huge picture of Osama Bin Laden and a caption reading "Some people want you dead." It's one of about 20 scattered throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex advertising radio talk station KLIF, home of Darrell Ankarlo, Glenn Beck, Greg Knapp, Bill O'Reilly et al. This "shockvertising" is a milder version of the original campaign, which included a television commercial depicting a sweet little American family with crosshairs over the baby's head. The TV ad still runs, but now the crosshairs aren't fixed over the baby.

Listening to someone I THINK was the station manager this morning made me sick. He asserted that the station is not trying to use fear tactics to promote itself but rather, (paraphrased) trying to wake us up to reality.

My reality does not include or necesssitate worrying night and day about whether or not some wild-eyed Muslim extremist is perched somewhere unseen getting ready to put a bullet into my grandson's skull. Gangs, home invaders and carjackers are a much greater danger to our personal safety here in the Metroplex, but I don't see anyone mounting a huge campaign to "wake us up" to those threats. Personally, I feel more threatened by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice and their actions, which could very well be the cause of one or more of my loved ones being drafted to fight a war we didn't choose, but you can bet if I put up such a billboard here in Texas I'd be lynched.

The truth is, there are people who want to change our reality, and they're not just Muslim extremists--they're called the Bush administration, right-wing talk radio, Fox News, and others of that ilk. I'm not buying.