Truth..?

So, I was watching the Colbert Report, when a commercial came on for Truth. The commercial consisted of people doing nice things, and then using bullhorns to advertise the fact. Their point was that a tobacco company once did something nice (gave $125,000 to feed the poor), and then advertised the fact (to the tune of $20,000,000). My problems with this ad are as follows:

1. Without smokers, those poor would be out $125,000 worth of food. I don't have $125,000 in small change in the couch. You don't either. Between the two of us, we're looking at four, maybe five dollars, tops. (Okay, it's a bad point, but the next one is better. Trust me.)

2. The Truth people are ragging on tobacco companies for advertising... IN AN ADVERTISEMENT! They tell you about one incident of charity, and then state the advertising budget for the company. I don't technically know this to be true, but I don't know it not to refrain from being false, either. Hooray for triple negatives! Eat that, Truth!

On another note, my dad once told me never to say anything I wouldn't want on the front page of the paper. This is advice that seems to grow more and more useful as communication technology and software improve. I watched this commercial, formed an opinion, fired up the computer, and published to the world in the space of about four minutes. Most of that was firing up the computer. Again, in the interests of honesty, only about three people are reading this. In fact, I'm not sure why I went to all the trouble to link to them; they all know about each others' blogs. Still, I hope they appreciate the effort.

Still, the point holds: everything you say and do is subject to monitoring (both overt and clandestine), and anything you may do that could possibly be embarrassing may actually end up in front of thousands of your closest friends and family. Or it would, if you were more popular. This is, incidentally, the reason stand-up comedians have such lousy love lives, which leads to such rich experience, which leads to such great material, which leads to such glamorous careers. So the system works.