Assvertising

Part 27 in an ongoing series…

Have you seen the AT&T "alter ego" adverts, in which someone's phone isn't getting reception so they're missing an important call? Some of them are vaguely clever, like the Motorhead one, even if it is essentially just some guy doing a Jack Black impersonation. But one of them sets my teeth to grinding every single time I see it—which is scarily frequently considering how little TV I actually watch; they seem to run these things as constantly as those gawd-awful FreeCreditReport.com spots.

Anyway, this is the one I can't stand:

Transcript:

Dad in Background: Kelly? It's Daddy!

Dad in Foreground: Hey, pumpkin. It's Dad's phone. He can't answer right now because he doesn't have AT&T, which means he gets zero bars up here on this ridge. So, that text message about you spending the night at Stephie's? Johnny Knocker here won't get that. And, come Monday, you're gonna be the girl with the crazy father who no one wants to date.

Dad in Background: KELLY!!!

Dad in Foreground: Sorry, pumpkin.

There are about a thousand different reasons why I hate this commercial, and what it says about teenage girls, middle-aged men, daughters, fathers, and father-daughter relationships, just for a start, but the thing I think I hate most is the idea that if a father doesn't know where his teenage daughter is, the first thing he should do is make sure she isn't having ZOMG sex.

And, yeah, I know, I know, it's just a commercial, blah blah. Except the reason I hate it is because there are so many parents, even otherwise very decent parents, who put such an enormous amount of energy into making sure their kids aren't fucking that their kids end up fucked in a whole different way.

[Assvertising: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six.]