'Who asked YOU?'

Sometimes the media just goes looking to stir up trouble.

Take Stuart Elliott, writing in The New York Times about Sunday's Super Bowl ads. In breaking down the various commercials, he tries to tie in the violence in Iraq, claiming that "the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface."

He points to the violent nature of several spots, like "Rock, Paper, Scissors" or the "Face-Slapping Greeting," both from Anhueser-Busch, or a FedEx ad in which "an astronaut was wiped out by a meteor." (Evidently the poor caveman who was crushed by some large animal in last year's FedEx spot merits no synpathy.)

But where he goes too far was his description of

the unfortunate homonym at the heart of a commercial from Prudential Financial, titled “What Can a Rock Do?”



The problem with the spot, created internally at Prudential, was that whenever the announcer said, “a rock” — invoking the Prudential logo, the rock of Gibraltar — it sounded as if he were saying, yes, “Iraq.” (emphasis added)



To be sure, sometimes “a rock” is just “a rock,” and someone who has watched the Super Bowl XIX years in a row only for the commercials may be inferring things that Madison Avenue never meant to imply.

Reminds me of the Woody Allen line in Annie Hall when he discusses perceived anti-Semitism with his pal, played by Tony Roberts, claiming that he heard someone ask his friend "Jew eat?"

But, hey, judge for yourself. Here's the article in its entirety.