For the past 15 years, the month of September has been an important one here in the U.S. for the worst possible reason, with the terrorist attacks of 9/11 looming over everyone's minds. And so it blows my mind that multiple fully-functioning American citizens thought it was a good idea to make light of that awful day in the mattress commercial seen below, which is easily the most disturbing marketing since Soylent Green. I'll call it NSFW in that it might make you, the viewer, spit out a line of expletives.
I mean, there are like 17 actual fucks, and I don't know what to do with any of them here. For those who didn't watch - either because you're in public or because you don't want to go berserk in a comment section - the San Antonio branch of the company Miracle Mattress decided to market a promotional sale by calling it the "Twin Towers" sale. That's rather tasteless by itself, especially with two towers of mattresses in the background. But it's not the absolute worst idea in the world, since it involves every mattress in the store being sold for a twin mattress price. Wordplay, right?
But then things took a most staggeringly misguided turn when, in what appears to be an attempt at slapstick comedy, the pitchwoman throws her arms back and knocks the two men backwards, and they topple both of the mattress towers. It's mind-boggling. This is something that would feel out of place even on something as envelope-pushing as South Park, since there's no underlying message here. It's just a shitty concept made worse with a shockingly offensive payoff.
As you might imagine, this commercial was not welcomed with open arms and open wallets, as the video spread across the Internet and lit people's rage centers at every turn. Enough so that the home office of Miracle Mattress put out a public apology on its Facebook page.
That sounds like a genuine enough apology, although I'm sure that many have been calling for more drastic action to be taken against all involved. It's hard to put a specific penalty on this kind of stupid. But not impossible.
Awful commercials are a dime a dozen these days, but this one just goes above and beyond, offering no real reasoning or chance for innocent mistakes. When it comes to 9/11, most things that wouldn't have worked on TV immediately afterward still aren't always welcomed, especially when there's such a distance between the humor and the methodology behind it all. I assume none of the people involved are getting very good sleep after this, quality mattress or not.
