Sometimes you can't duck those wild pitches
Billboards grab captive drivers, but Oprah's likely out of reach
When you're stuck in traffic -- as I was on about seven different occasions over the weekend -- you can't help but turn your gaze to the countless billboards lining our expressways and streets.
Eat this. Drink up. Buy that. Gamble here. Shop there.
There's one on the South Side for a casket company. It's always offering steep discounts. Nothing wrong with that, but it's a bit startling. At least I've never seen it offer a 2-for-1 deal or proclaim, "Everything must go!"
Then there's the pitch to Oprah Winfrey. A billboard on I-57 near the 127th Street exits reads:
"Oprah, 3 million children with clefts need our help. We need yours."
The billboard -- one of seven in the south suburbs promoting a charity organization called the Smile Train -- features a photograph of a child with a cleft palate. It's heartbreaking. You hope they raise enough money so that every child with a cleft palate gets corrective surgery.
But what about that approach -- calling Oprah out like that? Clever, or unethical?
Every once in a while I'll get an e-mail from someone who wants me to rip Oprah for being indifferent to their pleas for help.
"We sent a petition to Oprah with more than 1,000 signatures, asking her to do a show or make a donation," they'll say.
"This is the 10th time we've contacted her, we've never even received a response! How could she be so uncaring?"
There's something incredibly naive about these e-mails. First of all, you think Oprah's gonna leap to action because I call her out on her non-response to you? Beyond that, it's not as if Oprah comes into her office every morning and is handed a bundle of letters, a printout of a dozen e-mail messages and a few "While You Were Out" slips. Folks, Oprah gets thousands of requests from individuals and charity organizations every month.
Remember when Jim Carrey stepped into God's shoes in "Bruce Almighty" and was overwhelmed by requests for miracles? That'd be a week off for Oprah.
So the Smile Train folks devised a way to get Oprah's (and the media's attention). Address her directly via these billboards.
I give them points for creativity -- but it's bad form to go public with the plea and to associate themselves with a celebrity who didn't ask for the association.
When gossip blogger Perez Hilton was allegedly punched after a confrontation with Will.I.Am in Toronto over the weekend, his first move was to Twitter about it:
I'm in shock. I need the police ASAP.
I was assaulted by Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas and his security guards. I am bleeding. Please. I need to file a police report. No joke.
Please, can the police come to the SoHo Met Hotel.
Another way to get the police to come: call the police.
(Perezito claims he called the cops first, THEN Twittered for help. Nevertheless.)
Perez and Will.I.Am posted dueling videos on Monday. Apparently it started with Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas confronting Perez about some of the meaner things he's written about her, and then Will.I.Am asked Perez to be more respectful, and Perez (by his own admission) used a homophobic slur to taunt Will.I.Am, which is odd because Perez is gay and he's the one who asked Miss California USA the gay marriage question, and then and does anybody else have a headache from all this silliness?
On Monday, the Black Eyed Peas manager was charged with assaulting Perez.
The amazing thing is that Perez hasn't been involved in more dustups, now that he's becoming more involved in the celeb world he blogs about. If you're going to mingle with starlets, present at awards shows, walk red carpets, pose for photos with celebs, etc., you're going to come face to face with some of the folks you've ripped to shreds -- and not all of them are going to grit their teeth and smile through it.
Obviously some factions of the entertainment world are thinking: If I befriend this guy, he won't rip on me. It's the same school of thought we saw in Chicago decades ago, when WLS-TV hired the acerbic print critic Gary Deeb, who was as nasty as any of the modern bloggers. Almost overnight, Deeb became the very windbag he used to destroy in his column.
On the video giving his side of the story, Perez says violence is never the answer. He identifies himself by his real name because he wants people to understand he was attacked as a human being.
Fair enough. But when you're calling women "fugly" or ripping on the children of celebrities, when you're drawing nasty little things on people's pictures like a troubled sixth-grader -- you know what, they're human beings too, my friend.