Being that TV has diminished my capacity to have a capacity, I’m especially fascinated by celebrity endorsements.
And given that TV-attached sports writing has been my primary occupation since 1982, sports celebrity endorsements, until lately, have been my favorites.
Not long ago, ESPN’s inhouse Pagliacci, Chris Berman, was simultaneously seen and loudly heard in commercials for Nutrisystem diet products and the latest three-cheese, deep-fried numbers down at Applebee’s. Judging from eventual appearances, he was far truer to Applebee’s.
Ex-NFL great Dan Dierdorf, as the analyst on ABC’s “Monday Night Football,”was simultaneously seen in commercials for a liquid diet product and Lay’s potato chips. Hey, a bag of chips doesn’t wash down by itself.
Joe Torre, when manager of the Yankees, wrote a book in which he claimed never to read any newspaper’s sports section during the season. Soon, he’d be heard in radio ads within Yankee games pitching a newspaper’s sports section, claiming to read it every day!
But the king of the thing is basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In his high-minded autobiography he claimed:
1) To have never worn high top sneakers because they transfer shock from the feet to “the great nemesis of athletes, the knees.”He credited his long career to never wearing high tops.
2) He never drank alcohol, he wrote, as both a Muslim and because of his recognition of alcohol as the cause of so many of society’s problems.
Abdul-Jabbar later would appear in ads pushing Reebok high top sneakers and Coors beer.
Now venerable (just won’t go away) Larry King has staked his claim. He now hosts an infomercial that actually appears in onscreen TV listings as a “Larry King Special Report.”
Not that it takes long to know better. As the newly named “Ambassador for Omega XL” — the latest feel great miracle capsule that has evaded your physician’s knowledge — King is here to bang the gong.
If the infomercial didn’t trade on King’s name and otherwise appear to be aimed at suckers, it would be brilliant satire. With King seated in a studio designed to appear like his old CNN show set, it opens with:
“My name is Larry King. Ya know, a few years ago, I had to have open heart surgery. Well, I recently met Ken Meares. Ken has developed and tested a product called Omega XL. We’re also going to speak with Dr. Sharon McQuillan.
“Now, what,” King asks both, “is Omega XL?”
Now why, we ask, would King open this sell by mentioning that he had heart surgery?Does Omega XL prevent heart disease? Cure it?
Omega 3 is commonly known as fish oil; it’s a dietary supplement that has been used for decades; nothing new. Omega XL is pitched as a derivative of “green-lipped New Zealand mussels.”Whatever, right from King’s first pitch it smelled fishy, felt oily.
On and on we went, one curious claim, backed by King’s dubious certifications, after another. At one point, King reached into a bowl of capsules and said, “I’m gonna take two, right now!” Had it included a laugh track it would have made a brilliant parody of all such infomercials.
For what it’s worth, Internet reviews of Omega XL—reviews that read credibly and authoritatively—are most unkind.
And Omega XL’s, “Call now, and we’ll double your order!” pitch is the kind that can provide clues about the veracity of claims to cure anything except vulnerability.
But best of all was this from King: “I’ve got to say, I’ve done very few testimonials in my life — you can count them on one hand — and this is a terrific product.”
Well, I don’t know how many fingers he has on that hand, but he has always been available to endorse instant life-changers, including Garlique, another dietary supplement, and Breathgems, a breath-cleansing product.
The garlic product preceded the breath product.