I agree with post 4. Cartoon characters in a TV ad are way down the list of life’s issues we should be mindful of. I try to blank out during commercials and I mute the drug ads so I do not hear the list of disgusting side effects warnings.
I understand the point you both make, but I have to disagree that it should be simply ignored.
I would dearly like to not pay attention to that kind of thing. But at this stage of my life, I am very sensitive to external efforts to influence the mindset of people for political purposes. I smell that, and instantly recognize it as programming and indoctrination. You may think it is just a cartoon character, but it is more than that. I think we ignore this kind of thing (and many of us have for years including myself) at our own peril, and we will only wake to it when it is too late if we ignore it.
I don’t watch television at all (except for a rare sporting event) and haven’t for going on 20+ years, so I don’t subject myself to this kind of thing. I find network programming to be completely nauseating even walking by.
I had a doctors appointment this morning, and they had the execrable Good Morning America on with George Stephanopoulous, and it made me grit my teeth, feeling as if I were a prisoner being subjected to programming a la Alex in A Clockwork Orange with his eyes held open. I had to listen to it for 20 min and couldn’t get away.
Andrew Breitbart once said: “Politics is downstream from culture”. He also said: “We can call it “Cultural Marxism” but at the end of the day, we experience it on a day to day basis, by that I mean minute to minute, second to second basis. It’s political correctness and it is multiculturalism.”
I believe the first quote is a fundamental truth and the second is an observation. I think both we ignore at our peril. At my age, I am simply finding it hard to ignore them, as much as I wish I could. I turn away and block my ears the same way I do when I hear the “Cars 4 Kids” advertisement, but once it is in your head, you don’t have to see or hear it.
And that only applies for people who are cognizant that things are being placed there against your will.
The vast majority of people simply suck that stuff into their brains, and there it sits and becomes part of the foundation without them even realizing or understanding it.