THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Lately there have been a number of TV commercials where someone shoves his face into the camera and shouts at the viewer. You may be wondering why anybody thinks this would sell anything.

It is the result of New York City provincialism.

Some years ago on a late night talk show, I remember a Jewish comedian from New York making fun of the very idea of "Alabama Jews." He pronounced Hebrew words with a wildly exaggerated Southern accent. This was allowed because, 1) he himself was a Jew of the Only True, or New York, variety, and 2) all Southerners -- even including Jewish Southerners -- are fair game.

You can say almost anything and be Politically Correct if you can throw in an insult to Southerners.

Most of us old guys remember the comic strip "Lil Abner." It was a national comic strip written by a self-described "liberal New York Jew" which ridiculed Ozark hillbillies without stint.

A little question: What would have been the fate of a self-described "Ozark hillbilly" who tried to start a national comic strip ridiculing New York Jews?

Don Rickles, "the insulting comedian," is an outstanding example of New York Jewish humor. He had rich New York City backers who laughed themselves sick over his getting in people's faces and insulting them as a form of humor. It's called "In Your Face" humor, and it has people in New York and Miami rolling on the floor laughing while the rest of the country is changing channels.

Commercials reflecting this sort of New York taste appear from time to time. One recently was for a computer services outfit. In this commercial the chairman calls on someone in the board room. As soon as the man tries to talk a young guy jumps up on the conference table with a megaphone and begins to shout.

Why would anybody think that loud rudeness would sell anything?

Let me explain the New York thinking here: computers are for Young People, you see, and this guy is what truly provincial New Yorkers think of as America's Youth. It is a cross between Jewish humor and Gangsta Rap.

Another such in-your-face commercial is for Diversity. It shows a black man in a spacesuit. The black man in the suit informs us that we are "shocked" by seeing a black man in an astronaut outfit. He then shoves his face into the camera and yells at us to "get over it." New York Brotherhood in action!

Actually, no one is surprised to see a black man posing as an astronaut. It is required in every science fiction movie. We would be shocked if he were a fully qualified astronaut who got into the space program without any reference whatsoever to affirmative action.

But this guy isn't.

I think we are all aware that one of the main rewards for people attacking the tobacco industry is the fact that it gives them a chance to attack the region where the tobacco companies are found. When Dick Van Dyke made his anti-smoking movie "Cold Turkey," the first scene representing a tobacco company was a close-up of a Confederate flag. In the same spirit of the Love Generation, today's anti-smoking ads are "in-your-face" and seething with hatred.

The tobacco settlement gave anti-smoking groups huge amounts of money to put on "anti-smoking" ads. The ads I have seen spend most of their time attacking tobacco COMPANIES rather than giving any education on smoking itself. Not long ago, one of these ads had someone riding down the streets of a suburb in a tobacco company area at night waking people up with a megaphone. They don't do that in liquor or beer-making areas.

But everybody knows what section of the country that megaphone was being used against..

That, after all, is what most of the people in these groups are in on this movement for. As Joe Sobran pointed out, the reason the left finds it so easy to label everything on the right "Hate" is precisely because that is their motivation and they assume it is ours.