All the Angst That's Fit to Print

Leave it to a New York Times columnist to come up with a political angle on the Super Bowl.

In "Super Bowl Ads of Cartoonish Violence, Perhaps Reflecting Toll of War", Stuart Elliott pines:

No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials.

Later Elliott later comments on the Prudential Financial "What Can a Rock Do?" ads.

The problem with the spot, created internally at Prudential, was that whenever the announcer said, “a rock” — invoking the Prudential logo, the rock of Gibraltar — it sounded as if he were saying, yes, “Iraq.”

To be sure, sometimes “a rock” is just “a rock,” and someone who has watched the Super Bowl XIX years in a row only for the commercials may be inferring things that Madison Avenue never meant to imply.

Huh? Did anyone else REALLY think they were saying "Iraq" instead of "a rock?"