I swear….

In their relentless effort to infantilize and coarsen American culture, corporate marketers and Madison Avenue agencies have found yet another approach that no doubt garners sophomoric, Beavis-and-Butthead-like chortles from its couch-hugging audiences: the use of "near curse words." Reminiscent of those halcyon middle school years when every near-sound-alike and alternate-meaning word (e.g., abut,  abreast, erection, chit, asinine, edict, etc.) generated eye rolls and barely stifled guffaws from thirteen-year-old boys, the advertising world has reverted its catch-phrases to the level of snickering, pre-adolescent maturity.

So in recents months, Booking.com's marginal tagline, "Booking.dot yeah!" with its faint allusion (in sound and in the actors' behavior) to "Fucking, yeah!" has been joined by Verizon and Draftkings.com. Verizon's latest run of FIOS advertisements has been liberally studded with the ridiculously transparent phrase, "Half-fast," spoken with enough pacing by Mom, Dad, Sis, and little brother to make the whole family look like full asses.

Not to be outdone, the fantasy sports website Draftkings has come up with its own promise that lucky players can win a "shipload of money." More like a shit-load of hypocrisy, but certainly a phrase well-suited to the delayed emotional maturity of its fantasy-sports-playing user base.

It's apparently not enough that American television comedy has largely devolved to bathroom humor, sexual innuendo, and punch lines written by sixth-graders. That race to the bottom, with its nonstop appeal to the pre-adolescent intellect, has now invaded the commercial advertising arena as well. It's comforting to know that the unforgettable tag lines of the past--GE's "We bring good things to light," Gillette's "The best a man can get," Mazda's "Zoom zoom," Allstate's "You're in good hands," Coke's "It's the real thing," Wendy's "Where's the beef?", and Kellogg's (Tony Tiger's) "They're great!"--are being succeeded by "Fucking yeah!", "Half-assed," and "Shit-loads of money?"