I've seen the following commercial many times in the last 24 hours, especially since I was basically glued to the boob tube watching NFL Wild Card weekend.
It took me the longest time to figure out what the daughter says when the father asks what he got for Christmas, after he rewarded his kids sweet V-cast cellys as gifts - nice dad by the way.
Watch the clip first.
The daughter says,
"Aftershave."
I had to scour the Net to figure it out, and I'm happy to learn I wasn't the only person who couldn't understand what the girl said.
There's literally dozens of us out there, yo. (See:
1,
2,
3)
In response to that, the father replies, "No.
Dad got
hosed."
This cracks me up because: 1) working in technology field, I know that when a system gets hosed, it means it's f*cked up royally -- cellphones vs. aftershave, yeah, that is f*cked up; 2) the father has pretty full beard, so he's not really shaving much; and 3) you never really hear Black people talk like that; the unexpected punchline is funny to me.
But in my search to find out what the girl said, I learned that a lot of people out there, many of them bruthas and sistas, are misinterpreting what the father says as
hoes, ya know, as in
bitches and hoes.
And they are up in arms over it.
Actually, that would make for an even funnier commercial, in my opinion: kids got cellphones, Dad got a streetwalker.
Right on, bruh, it's the Hip-Hop Effect: all bruthas care about is bitches and money, right?
Can you hear me now?
And, by the way, doesn't it make you wonder: what about Mom?
Now, there are real problems with bias and bigotry out there, but even if this commercial clip was intended in a negative vein, it's not worthy of anyone's anger.
If you really feel dissed by the Verizon clip, hit them where it counts: boycott them, and don't do business with them ever.
Maybe I have a thicker skin, but if you consider that when they were my age, my parents were just a few years removed from being relegated to the back of the bus, is getting twisted over a TV commercial really worth it?
If it is, then they've really got us by the balls.
Anti-black bigotry in America, it's like air: it's everywhere -- even in commercials -- but we can't let every little breath we take choke us up; we need to focus on problems much bigger than 30-second spots.