This Ended Up Longer Than I Thought It Would

No, random person on the radio.  I won’t take it from you  

What are you taking?  Guff?  Advice?  A butt-kicking?  Please tell me it's a butt-kicking!  

I won't be taking her word for something.   

I have a deep-seeded distrust in commercials.  It's one of the reasons I don't watch much TV anymore.  Well, that and 83% of the shows that are on are truly terrible.  Basically, the idea behind a commercial is that somebody who got paid an awful lot of money is telling you that a product or service provided by the company that paid them is a good idea.  It's akin to me standing in a grocery store, offering you $100 to say the words "I like Coke better than Pepsi."  It may or may not be true, but who cares?  For 100 bucks, you can lie for 10 seconds, then leave the store and buy all the Pepsi you want later.  (Side note, I very much prefer Coke to Pepsi, but I buy Pepsi because Coke's bottles don't fit in my fridge.  That's how much it matters to me.)  

Then there's the celebrity spokesperson.  A formerly well-known entertainment icon who claims to make use of, leave alone recognize, a specific product.  My favorite of these is, of course, Mr. T's Flavorwave Oven Commercial.  I'm supposed to believe that the Flavorwave oven is great at cooking things because Mr. T made some ridiculous amount of money standing next to somebody cooking with it while quoting catch phrases (one of which wasn't even his)?  Forget the veracity of this endorsement...maybe he is entirely genuine about liking the food made in the over...maybe his taste is totally different than mine.  I mean...maybe he likes awful, undercooked food with bland flavors, and the oven is perfect for him, but lousy for me. 

Some commercials are even worse.  You have some moron falling all over themselves trying to answer their phone because their blanket doesn't have sleeves, somebody who doesn't know how to use a spatula to flip a fried egg, a guy who dumps a bucket of water all over his car because he's carrying more things than are necessary to wash a car, and a guy disgusting a hot girl by pouring coffee on himself while he's not wearing a bib.  I can not stress enough that I'm Not Making That Last One Up.  These are people who are obviously unfit for society, and yet, I'm supposed to take the message that I need some product or service because the same thing could happen to me.  

Well, there's a commercial on the radio in the Greater Jeremy Area recently which includes a warm and inviting message.  That despite everything you've heard to the contrary, building a new casino nearby is a great idea for the local economy.  The spokeswoman gives all the usual party lines.  About how international visitors will be attracted to the casino because...hey...casino!  And lots of new jobs (at a whole dollar above minimum wage, certainly).  And lots of money paid out in taxes to the town.  The spokeswoman invites the listener to "take it from me..." that the new casino is going to be the bee's knees.  

Well, it's not.  Forget the fact that the ever-broadening legalization of gambling has watered down people's desire to go to casinos in the first place.  Forget the fact that casinos are Flocking Out Of "Nearby" Atlantic City.  Forget the studies on casinos and Local Crime Rates.  I'm supposed to take the word of some compensated endorser on the radio.  And who is this disembodied voice, you ask?  I have no idea.  Not because I don't recognize the person's name...but because she never says who she is in the first place.  I'm not going to take it from you, because I don't know who you are, why your opinion matters to me, why your tastes are the same as mine, or whether you're even sincere about saying the new casino is awesome.  

Upon further review, the average compensation for casino workers in Jeremy's State is just over $36,000/year, including benefits and tips.  Minimum wage by itself without benefits and tips is a little under half of that.  "Average" is also a weird term when talking about wages, since there are undoubtedly some very high numbers that skew the statistics.  That's more math than Jeremy feels like looking up right now.  Suffice to say that the bulk of the new jobs created will almost assuredly be on the lower end of the bell curve.