Commercialist: Verizon Wireless

Okay, has anyone seen that commercial where a father and mother ask their daughter whether she's going out with a friend, and she starts talking to her hand with a gigantic expletive-eating grin as if it's the wittiest way ever to convey that she's too criminally retarded to pick up the house phone?

"Sorry, there's somebody on my OTHER line! ... Hello?"

Aside from taking 'talk to the hand' a little far, it just makes me wonder how many households have kids who tried this and didn't have it just piss the parent off to the point of never getting them a phone as long as they live. Or something other than that exasperated look of 'I have to live with it'. I'm really starting to dislike the 'kids act like complete and utter pains to you so that you'll buy our product' tack that some advertisers - including Verizon and other phone companies - take towards their customers. I get angry when my kids try to pull this on me, let alone when some fictional entities in a commercial seem to think that whining is going to make me want to buy their product.

Thanks, Verizon, for giving our kids an example of how to be a sarcastic little pest to get what they want. Thanks.