Sunday, October 24, 2010

Advertising Horror of the Day

I just saw a reprehensible TV commercial for the Dodge Charger.

First, the usual blah blah chatter about how awesome and manly this car is (during a football game, every single thing advertised will be bristling with aggressive manliness, which is eye-rollingly tiresome but too commonplace to stir me from my reading).

Then, the money quote:

"It's not just American craftsmanship. It's an American craft manship."

Gag.

Seriously, Dodge? That's a really terrible pun. Also, it's stupid.

The commercial goes on to make much of the newly-invented term 'manship,' summoning, I suppose, both the concept of a seafaring vessel that is bold, masculine, square-jawed and rippling with taut muscles, and the use of '-ship' tacked onto a word to indicate a quality.

Like, you know, 'leadership,' refers to a quality of 'being a leader,' so 'manship' apparently refers to a quality of 'being a man.' A man with a bold and masculine seafaring vessel at his command. The master of his fate, and the captain of his soul!

The kind of man who's man enough to go buy a car, because it takes some real manliness to do that, as evidenced by the paucity of automotive vehicles on the roads these days.

Sometimes in the old days we might have used the word 'manhood,' but '-hood' doesn't have anything to do with 'craftsmanship,' so clearly a new word had to be made up.

I'm not at all opposed to making up words, but I am opposed to making up words specifically so you can make terrible puns with them.

Shut up and get off my television screen, Dodge. Your feeble wordcraftery disgusts me.

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