ROGER SIMON COLUMN
FEBRUARY 5, 2005
WASHINGTON - - Given my profession, I guess it is no surprise that I am a news junky. I actually enjoy reading the news, listening to it on radio and watching it on TV.
Once, on a "get away" weekend in Cape May, N.J., at a bed and breakfast in an old, Victorian home where they forbade TV, I snuck a small, portable television inside so I could secretly watch the news. (OK, so I watched "Seinfeld", too.)
I watch all three broadcast news shows each night. This means I have to channel-surf between ABC and CBS where I live because they come on at the same time, but I get to watch all of NBC, which comes on a half-hour later.
There is one part of each nightly news broadcast that I cannot watch, however. No, not the violence or the "human interest" stories about people who own cats that can drive.
What causes me to switch channels the instant they come on are the drug commercials.
It may not have escaped your attention that these seem to be a majority of the ads on the nightly news. The reasoning is sound: Baby Boomers are big news consumers and Baby Boomers also take a lot of prescription medicine.
But the commercials drive me nuts. With the exception of the sexual dysfunction drug ads, some ads do not even make clear what malady the drugs are supposed to cure.
Instead they feature people running in slow motion through fields or people tossing Frisbees to their dogs or elderly people hugging their grandchildren. All the people are happy and smiling.
Are these the people you see in your doctor's waiting room? They aren't the ones I see in mine.
But on TV, the drugs have cured them and have made them wonderfully happy.
OK, fine. We all know ads exaggerate. But where the drugs ads really drive me wild is when they end by saying, "Call your doctor today and ask for the little, plaid pill!"
Are we really supposed to be qualified to make such a decision after seeing a TV commercial? Especially an unrealistically optimistic TV commercial?
And, as I said, some ads do not make clear what the drug is supposed to cure. Yet we are supposed to pick up the phone and call our doctors and say, "I want the little, plaid pill!"
That might happen if you could get your doctor on the phone. Which you can't.
Wonder why you can't get your doctor on the phone? Wonder why sometimes you can't even get a live receptionist on the phone, but get a recorded message instead?
Because so many people are wasting their doctor's time demanding the little, plaid pill, that's why!
I understand why doctors don't want to come to the phone: Why do they want to hear demands for medicine from people who have just gotten their medical degrees by watching a TV commercial?
Even if your doctor is not a genius - - and not all doctors are - - at least he probably knows what the little plaid, pill is supposed to cure. Which is more than most of the callers know.
OK, that is my rant for today. I have to get back to the news. I hear there is a guy in Cleveland whose parakeet can play the piano.