Saturday, October 6, 2007

Spanish Commercials on "English" TV

I saw this on the news this morning and I couldn't believe it.

Here's the gist: This guy in south Florida wanted to sell more Toyotas so he aired a commercial for his dealership on a channel other than Telemundo or Univision.

I wish I could focus on the Spanish that this guy tries to speak on the commercials, because it's pretty funny. It sounds like Spanish by the numbers, where he learned certain and repeated them over and over until he had it memorized, even though he has no comprehension of what he's saying.

But no, the story here is that there was a huge outcry from viewers calling the man behind the commercials un-American, greedy, and traitorous.

Another twist is that this guy writes a blog so he discusses it all on there.

But wait, un-American? There are a lot of stupid, ignorant comments out there on this issue, but some of them sound like they're coming from pretty intelligent, thoughtful people, which strikes me as incredibly odd:

"The whole issue is that this is America and Spanish ads should not be running on English TV stations, period. We are not a bilingual country. Run them on the Spanish stations, no problem. But Spanish ads thrown in with English programming – he's got [testicular fortitude] and so do the stations that allow them to run."

What's the problem here? Who cares? Don't we all hate commercials anyway? Someone please tell me what the outcry here is all about. Is it about the larger immigration issues? Racism?

I just don't get this one.