I eat Snickers every chance I get.

Editor's Note : A few weeks ago, Sports Media Review insinuated that the reason this blog develops so slowly is because Johnny Hatchett has a life. This is not true.

Yes, this blog develops slowly. I can't seem to keep pace with the mighty, mighty blogosphere. Also, I'm attempting to blog as part of my coursework; the project that I've begun to that end is housed at emptypanopticon.org. It's supposed to be a blog informed by sociological research on technology, surveillance, & social control. But I finds ways to sneak in some sports anyway.

That said, I do hope to (intermittently) keep up with this blog. Maybe I'll be a day or two late on every issue that I write on, but so it goes. Not every thought needs an instant voice, right?

So : with that said :

There are a few ingredients that will keep me away from a product. Right now, I eat vegetarian meals, so any kind of meat is one of those ingredients. The other two are high fructose corn syrup & partially hydrogenated oil. I'm not sure why I avoid those : have little in the way of science to prop my decision : but I generally do.

Why am I exposing my nutritional superstitions? Well, because Snickers® Brand products have one of those two ingredients - the partially hydrogenated (soybean) oil. (To my astonishment, some of the Snickers® Brand products, including the traditional candy bar, do not use that high fructose gunk. Good for them.)

What this means is that I wouldn't likely be eating Snickers® Brand products before their Super Bowl debacle.

But, apparently, Snickers® Brand products are more than gooey amalgamations of caramel, peanut, nougat, etc. They're either a delicious prop in a really funny advertisement or, as super-blogger Americablog.com tells us, they're a nefarious prop in a homophobic advertisement. (Americablog.com tells you just about everything that you could ever possibly need to know about this advertisement, the marketing campaign built around it, the N.F.L.'s explicit support of it, etc.)

Personally, I agree with Americablog.com. The advertisement wreaks of homophobia, not because it incites Snickers® Brand consumers to hate people who are gay, but because it contributes to the enforcement of a social taboo against (certain forms) of homosexual desire & intimacy. If the advertisement is "about" anything, it's as much "about" what I (as a male viewer) should feel about my own desires & intimacy as it is about what I should do about other male viewers' desires & intimacies.

But isn't the advertisement hi-bloody-larious?

Well, as Mars, Inc. acknowledged, humor is subjective. What that acknowledgement ignores is that humor & homophobia (or any form of hate &/or inequality) are not mutually exclusive. This logic seems to imply that good, effective humor excuses - or even decreases - the significance of the stereotype the humor depicts.

Yes, the ways that humor undermines or exploits stereotypes & inequalities is complex. Spike Lee speaks to this in Bamboozled, closing the movie with a montage of the ways that whites used/continue to use humor to reinforce racist beliefs. (Or was that montage in The Confederate States of America?) More recently, we've struggled with this when watching Chappelle's Show. Or Borat.

&, anyway, even if we could forget about homophobia & heterosexism for a minute, what's so funny about a visual punchline that everyone in the room knew was coming?

peace love gap,
Johnny Hatchett

PS : Let's talk a little more about the straight men who were disgusted, not by the homophobia, but by the kiss. Let's talk a little more about what I think was the sensuousness : the close up : : the open mouths : hungry lips : the closed eyes : of the approach : even if a joke & accidental, even if around a goddamn Snickers® Brand candy bar. That sensuousness made a lot of people uncomfortable... & gosh, imagine if the commercial had ended here : with "I think we just accidentally kissed" returned by a look of acknowledgment from the long-haired mechanic. This country would buzz, would still be buzzing.