Awhile back, I was watching an old clip on YouTube from the Dick Cavett Show, which originally ran from 1968-1975 on ABC as a sortof thinking person’s Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, being more focused on current events and thinkers/newsmakers than entertainment and celebrities, though celebrities featured occasionally.
In the clip I was watching, Cavett – in his dry, intelligent, urbane manner – is interviewing Alfred Hitchcock. They break for a commercial (which is not shown), and when they come back Cavett asks his next question.
Hitchcock stops him mid-sentence and says, “I think it is remarkable that those people we just saw in that ad are so happy about being constipated.”
I thought of this when I woke up this morning because the very first thing, literally, my mind started doing was playing this: “As time went on, it was easy to seeeeeeeeeee: I’m lowering my A1CCCCCCCCCCCCCCC!” It’s a line from a commercial for the diabetes drug Jardiance. If you’ve been watching football, or baseball before that – or really any television – I know you know it. Where I live, we begin each day with Good Morning America on the bigscreen tv in our dining room in the background, and it’s just not breakfast until the opening line of the big diabetes dance number: “I have Type 2 diabetes, but I manage it well. It’s a little pill with a big story to tell!”
Whence we are transported to the center of a park with some of the happiest people who have ever lived dancing a well-choregraphed number as our diabetes sufferer sings about once-daily Jardiance. An African-American postman walks into their midst; he is also very happy as he smiles at then starts dancing (badly) with our giddy Jardiance-taker, and then explains through a voice-over how Jardiance works while also warning the medicine could kill you, shut down your kidneys, or cause a “rare, life-threatening bacterial infection in the skin of the perineum.”
If you’re wondering where your perineum is, you’re not alone – I have had my current body for almost 58 years and I had to ask Google! (What is the perineum? – Google Search)
The woman changes into a cheerful, bright yellow dress for the big finale: “Jardiance is really swell! The little pill with a big story to tell!” As writer Abby Heugel posted to X formerly known as Twitter:
Be kind. Everyone is going through something. Heartache. Financial stress. Their bananas ripened too quickly. Having the song from the Jardiance commercial stuck in their head because it’s aired 5 million times a day.
We all have our battles to fight.
I find it really annoying when celebrities jump on the bandwagon. I don’t want to know Cyndi Lauper has overcome her psoriasis with Cosentyx. More to the point, I don’t want to know Cyndi Lauper has psoriasis. Or that Lady Gaga gets migraines, which Nurtec has helped her with. I have a fundamental objection to prescription drugs being advertised like peanut butter, or Windex®, or Chevy trucks.
I think the idea behind these drug commercials is, as with most if not all advertising, to convince you that life would be better if you take whatever they are selling. But I rely on my doctor, with his years of training and experience, to tell me what will make my life better given what ails me, not the other way around. These commercials are not aimed at doctors; not once has my doctor prescribed me a medication and then said, “I’m so happy Matt is taking this drug I’m going to go dance in the park with a postman.” The underlying message of the ads is that taking whatever drug they’re advertising will make you, the patient, happy, not your doctor.
They sometimes say, “ask your doctor if [medication] is right for you,” but I expect him not only to know but tell me what is right for me, without my asking! That’s why he gets the big bucks. There’s this one ad for a medication used to treat HIV.
The ad features Leo (above), a very handsome young man with HIV who has switched to the drug they are advertising to treat it. So, as the ad suggests, I asked my doctor if that medication, Dovato, was right for me. My doctor knows me pretty well, is gay himself, and had seen the ad; he responded, “knowing you, I think Leo is right for you, but Dovato isn’t!”
I should acknowledge here that these advertisements are clearly effective – I just spent a whole morning writing about them (and thinking about Leo!), which means, regardless of whether I like the ads or the people in them, I am aware of the drugs advertised. Perhaps that’s the strategy. So when it’s time to quit smoking – Chantix – or treat acute mania of bipolar 1 disorder – Vraylar – prevent heart failure – Entresto – or lessen the effects of rheumatoid arthritis – Humira – and so on. I just realized how sad it is that I should know all that.
Now granted, these drug commercials aren’t as bad, er…downright creepy, as the Charmin bears, a family of multicolored ursine cartoons that regularly discuss the quality, texture, and thickness of their toilet paper with each other while they dance (again with the dancing?) about their house, rub their faces on the toilet paper, and, as if we didn’t get the message that their bottoms are clean after they “enjoy the go,” wiggle their butts to camera. But really, with all the dancing in the park with federal workers, that diabetes lady is so happy and her life is so great now that she’s taking Jardiance, it makes me want to lower my A1C – and I don’t even know what that is.