the bad taste police

For the most part, I’m pretty laid back. Nothing really bothers me, I let most stuff just roll off my back, especially when it comes to PC issues.

That includes my sense of humor. My sense of humor is kinda like Dexter’s feelings — there’s not much you can do to rock my boat.

But I’m pulling out my badge as a sergeant in the Bad Taste Police on two commercials invading TV right now. Believe it or not, neither of them have anything to do with TBS’s constant Frank TV or Leverage promos during baseball games:

“They’re here” DirecTV Poltergeist commercial: There’s a “Family Guy” line where Brian cracks “That joke was as limp as FDR’s legs!” When everyone gasps, he cowers. “Too soon?” Well, guess what DirecTV. It’s too soon to be exploiting the memory of Heather O’Rourke’s famous Poltergeist line as nothing other than a cheap throwaway. While I bet 90 percent of the people watching those commercials don’t even remember O’Rourke died at age 12 after getting sick on the set of Poltergeist III, I do. And while it’s still controversial over whether filming or her hectic acting schedule had anything to do with it, how could it have helped?

We expect big companies like DirecTV to buy the rights to show that scene, and crazy people like Tom Cruise (the owner of the movie’s production company, MGM) to sell off those rights. They’re evil, we all know it. But shame on Craig T. Nelson! Does Nelson really need the money that bad that he’s willing to spit on O’Rourke’s grave? He had the good sense not to be involved with P-III — so why couldn’t he have the good sense to steer clear from this? It’s shocking to me the little voice in his head didn’t go off at any time filming this commercial. “Umm, I probably shouldn’t be doing this.” Hopefully he gave a cut of whatever kind of loot he’s making (I’d say around $200k, at least, but probably more like $500k) to O”Rourke’s family, some kind of scholarship fund in her name or some kind of charity that fights against child heart attacks (that’s how she died after a long illness first discovered on the P-III set).

Brook Shields Volkswagon commercials: How soon everyone forgets, but we didn’t know Tom Cruise was really crazy until he laid into Shields in May 2005 for using medication to curb her postpartum depression. Shields had confessed she suffered from the depression after having her first child, and the two went back-and-forth at each other in the press until Cruise went on the Today show and told Matt Lauer he’s a douchebag for not knowing the history of psychiatry like Cruise does. A month later, he was hopping on Oprah’s couch while we all started realizing, “He’s gone.”

So here comes Shields, after her very public confession to the world of the seriousness of her battle with postpartum, making fun of fictional pregnancies on the new Volkswagon campaigns. Apparently, her conscious is buried somewhere in the sewers of Sunset Boulevard, right next to Nelson’s. And apparently, it wasn’t the first time she took medication — this lady is nuts. It’s jaw-droppingly stunning as to why she would make fun of anyone’s pregnancy by saying it would be just so they can buy a car. How would she have felt if someone told her that while she was going through postpartum? “Hey Blue Lagoon, nice kid and all, and I can see you’re a little down, but admit it — you had that baby just so you can buy a Volkswagon, right? Ha! Got you!” We’d all be watching round-the-clock coverage of the Brooke Shields murder trial on E! right now if that really happened. On the bright side, it would have been hysterical to see Kathy Griffin as E!’s correspondent dishing all the Suddenly Susan secrets.

And how many people did VW go through before settling on Shields? If she turned it down, who was next, Jaime Lynn Spears?

I try to let these things slide, I do. But next week when John Mellencamp is on TV next week endorsing the patch while he finishes off his fourth pack of the day, or Amy Winehouse doing a commercial for the Betty Ford Clinic, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Nothing is too shocking anymore.