When lunatics pitch . . .

I usually keep my car radio tuned to the news-talk station here in Atlanta. One of the simple pleasures of listening to this station is the commercials (yes, I'm serious--stick with me here).

A recent series of commercials for AirTran Airways featured an announcer with a dramatic voice saying, "AirTran Airways has super-low fares, business class on every flight, and all new planes. And if that wasn't awesome enough, we promise that THIS will never happen." There then followed a skit featuring something outrageous happening on an airliner: a seatmate who communicated only by singing opera, a passenger who found himself seated in the "in-flight dodgeball section," a planeload of people on their way to a gargling convention, a Scottish-accented passenger going on a holiday with his sheep, a couple who discovered a "tray-table elf" who liked to "scamper and play," and so on. Very funny stuff.

One class of commercial that I don't like as well features a person who behaves like a lunatic, usually out of love for the product being advertised. Why a company would want to advertise its product with the help of a lunatic is beyond me, but it happens more often than you may have realized. And the thing that's downright galling is that the lunatic is usually a man, frequently a husband, who is put in his place by his sensible wife.

Just this week, however, I heard a commercial of this genre that featured a woman as a lunatic. It was a commercial for O'Charley's Restaurants, and in the commercial, a wife was wrapping Christmas presents that consisted of O'Charley's meals--a steak, a salmon dinner, and so on. Her husband asked her why she was doing such a silly thing. The woman gushed that O'Charley's meals were just perfect for this relative and that.

Of course, O'Charley's couldn't break the gender mold completely. In the end, the woman got the chance to slam the man's questioning by saying that he just wasn't in the Christmas spirit.

Sure makes me want to head on out to O'Charley's. How about you?