People today: they're all angry! There's taxes, politics-hell, the little man is getting screwed left and right! Corporate America understands and empathizes with your anger, and would like to encourage you to channel it into the constructive area of commerce. "On some fundamental level everyone's sick of everything, economically, politically," says one ad agency exec. Fortunately, skilled advertisers are able to take this vague and unsubstantiated insight into your psyche and put it to use by making just the type of ads that you want to see: angry ones! Just look:

If you go to the "Our History" section of the Aunt Jemima website, it gives a rather whitewashed rundown of key moment's in the company's long life. It was founded in 1889, and 100 years later, "the image of Aunt Jemima was updated by removing her headband and giving her pearl earrings and a lace collar." But what about the image of Aunt Jemima, say, six or seven decades ago? Did she still "stand for warmth, nourishment and trust"? Well kind of, but it was more of a nourishment and trust of racism. Embrace your past, Quaker Oat Company! We dug through the archives for some classic Aunt Jemima ads from the 1940s, and it's true what they say: "Happifyin' Aunt Jemima Pancakes Sho' Sets Folks Singin'!" About racism!:

Let's say up front that the super-prestigious Cannes advertising awards are, like most awards, a bit of a scam. They're a for-profit operation that charges ad agencies a lot of money to enter, and in return bestows something that the agencies can use in their own marketing materials. Plus they gave an award to those crazy sexist beer ads this year, so their judgment is obviously fallible. Still, the ad industry considers them a big deal, and they're a good guide to what's considered important in the field. So it was extremely groundbreaking when an online campaign (rather than a TV campaign) won the Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes this year. On the other hand, maybe it was just because people love Japanese dancers?

Just like you can block pop-up ads on your computer, you can also buy software to block porn, if you wanted to do that for some odd reason. But that very software has to have its own ads—preferably ads that incorporate porn, for clarity's sake! You can see the quandary. One German porn-blocking company solved the problem with some strategic Photoshop work [UPDATE: A concept pioneered at Something Awful], and the result is so creative you almost want to buy their purifying product just to applaud the effort (not really). Two of the company's ads, via Copyranter, are after the jump. They're perfectly SFW, as long as you don't use any imagination.

People still profess confusion about which ad man had his way with JC Penney's image, making an unauthorized teen sex ad and submitting it to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Neither the pissed-off retailer nor its apologetic ad agency would name names, and Ad Age yesterday concluded, "Just who is responsible for creation of the ad... is a bit cloudy." But it's not, really. Is it? It's got to be Mike Long, of Epoch Films. Read why, and watch one of Long's other "fake" Penney ads, this one a bit terrifying, after the jump.

The fantastically transgressive teen sex ad yesterday from middlebrow retailer JC Penney turned out not to be sanctioned by the company, predictably. That was just too much to hope for. But the fun part now is watching the fallout-after all, can you fucking imagine how pissed the JC Penney people are right now? They are very pissed. They company sent us a statement disavowing the ad last night, and now the ad agency has just sent its own statement explaining how it had, uh, nothing to do with this salacious underage sex production. Now we're just waiting for the third party-who is likely getting screamed at very loudly right now-to take responsibility. Official statements from the two main players after the jump, and our prediction for the next one to come:

That JC Penney commercial, which featured two teens practicing for a naked romp in the basement? The one that won a prize at the Cannes Lions Awards this weekend and spread quickly on the Web yesterday? It was an unauthorized fake, and executives at the department store are royally pissed. "It's obviously inappropriate and nothing we would ever condone," Penney's chief marketing officer told the Wall Street Journal. "We're very disappointed that our logo and brand position were used in that way." Thus began the blame game over who unleashed this mutant sorta-sex tape, one that will seem oh-so-familiar to anyone who recalls, say, the Miley Cyrus incident with Vanity Fair.

Well, it's official now: teen sex is okay with middle America. This momentous shift comes in the form of a new JC Penney ad, in which the thoroughly middlebrow retailer has a few laughs about two teen luvahs learning to put their clothes on quickly enough to avoid the mom of the house walking in on them doing the nasty. Forget the whole Miley Cyrus photo uproar! Go home, abstinence-preaching Christians! If JC Penney can sell three-packs of Hanes boxers to your family using a well-placed horny teen theme, well, it's time to lay the "controversy" of teenage sexuality to rest. They like to fuck-particularly on top of JC Penney products! Watch the commercial acknowledgment of biology and profound cultural moment for mall moms, after the jump:

$100 million. That's how much Cottonelle is currently spending on an ad campaign to sell its toilet paper. And for that kind of cash, they're not talking out the side of their mouths about "freshness" and "toilet tissue." They're telling you straight out: our product will be used on your "bottom." In fact, now that ads for erectile dysfunction and period problems have become commonplace, ads for poop-related products are also stepping up with the strong, clear language of truth. Not just "bottom," but also "behind." Actually, it would be better if everyone just shut up:

Celebrities: they're in ads! That's because celebrities tend to sell stuff to people, according to the New York Times, which broke this story wide open with an epic piece in yesterday's paper. There are three clear points that you, the educated consumer, must understand: Companies are run by starry-eyed celebrity hound white guys who will pay any price to hang out with a cool rapper or have their umbrella endorsed by Rihanna; many celebrities are themselves sheep, convinced that their endorsement deal is a meaningful attempt by a corporation to plumb the depths of their soul (it's really not! surprisingly); and finally, all of this is the fault of dirty gossip websites just like this one!

Heinz has a new commercial out in the UK starring a guy who works at a deli. He's so popular for his delicious mayonnaise, you see, that the man of the house gives him a kiss on the way out the door. But Bill O'Reilly sees this for what it really is: "It was obviously a gay thing!" O'Reilly's insight into the gay issue is almost as piercing as his colleague John Gibson's was when he cracked all those gay jokes about Heath Ledger right after the actor's death. "This whole gender-blending thing, it's confusing to me," says O'Reilly. "I just want mayonnaise. I don't want guys kissing." Sorry; you must have a man's tongue in your mouth before you get any mayonnaise, Bill. Watch the homosexual Heinz ad after the jump.

This ad for Cooper's Beer just won an award at the prestigious ad festival in Cannes. I guess because of its sophisticated message: No Fat Chicks. The copy reads "Only 2.9% alcohol," meaning you won't get too wasted to notice this pretty girl is totally not skinny, and if you take her home, dude, whoa, watch out in the morning! I would really like to hear some Jezebel input on this thoughtful campaign. Click through for the second terrible award-winning spot, which has the equally important message: No Nerdy Chicks With Freckles Either, Broheim!:

Is it a mark of progress that our national ads can now feature characters that are far more foul-mouthed and offensive to white bread America than in times past? I'm inclined to say yes. The Times considers the rise of Family Guy characters as beloved ad icons, even for wholesome brands like Coke and Subway. But hey, sometimes they say things on that show that are funny! Times are changing, you see, and these cartoon characters are just acceptable enough to squeeze into the mainstream under the rubric of "edgy." Since this is a hugely popular TV show on the Fox Network that is just the next in a long line of "edgy" cultural moments, you could correctly call this an antiquated discussion (even for the olds). The real question is: will Americans stand for a fat, ignorant cartoon father telling them how to eat their meat?

When the movie Super Size Me came out, showing the ravaging effects of a monthlong fast food diet, it was terrible PR for McDonald's. The company spent tons of money combating the perceptions from that one overwrought documentary, seriously! And now, in what can only be described as a gift from the marketing gods, some fat guy has gone an all-McDonald's diet and actually lost 86 pounds (pictured: before and after). But the company won't sign him as a spokesman. You shallow fools! You think he's too ugly, DON'T YOU?

Air conditioning is not just one of the most important summertime problems facing the media. It's a problem facing everyone, because high gas prices are turning air conditioners into machines that burn $100 bills to produce cool air. Stores in high foot traffic areas have always thrown their doors open in the summer and blasted the AC, knowing that sweaty people will come in and browse just to get out of the sun. But now that strategy is not only hugely expensive, but bad PR as well; environmentalist customers will whine and complain and call the city and organize boycotts. An intrepid NYT reporter finds that wanton AC-wasters are centered—like the media—in SoHo:

Is it possible that beer advertising is becoming "silly" and "arbitrary?" We're going to go with "what do you mean, 'becoming?'" But the lack of "weight" and "integrity" to the "brand stories" of beer companies these days is really weighing on Seth Stevenson, Slate's generally sharp ad critic-and a man who obviously takes beer very seriously. While you or I might just accept that beer ads, of all things, are destined to be stupid in order to appeal to drunks, Stevenson allows a vapid Amstel commercial to send him into a deep spiral of despair. Why aren't they emphasizing the "five valid, logical criteria for choosing one beer over another" in their TV spots?!?!:

As Alex Pareene once said with a certain joie de vivre, "Leave it to the French to [insert something racy here]." Well, it doesn't get much racier than advertising to the gays—unless it's advertising to the lesbians! So Paris Las Vegas is appropriating a bit of that fake French savoir faire for their new ad campaign, which features the understated slogan, "Everything's sexier in Paris Las Vegas." Points to them for being inclusive, in a rather blunt and unsophisticated way. Gay-targeted ad pictured; lesbian-targeted ad (the content of which you might be able to guess), after the jump.

Spam: it's not just nasty meat in a can. It's a leading economic indicator! Hormel has been selling the ground-up pig concoction for more than 70 years, and it's acquired quite a status as a gross American icon. Plus, economists have noticed that people seem to buy more cheap, crappy food products as the economy gets worse, and Spam's increasing popularity provides a nice hook for Freakonomics-type stories tying the whole miserable economic picture into the meat-purchasing choices of you, the consumer. Good theory, but, as Ad Age points out, it has one major flaw: Spam is not even cheap.

Compared to say, used car dealers or ambulance chasing lawyers, pitches from Microsoft marketers come off as sophisticated and subtle. But compared to Apple's Steve Jobs, arguably one of the best product pitchmen of a generation, Microsoft's marketing comes off as tone deaf and out of touch. So anytime Microsoft puts out a video like the one embedded below — a bizarre commercial for Microsoft Touch, now installed at Las Vegas's Rio — some snarky blogger will happily point out all its flaws. Like how the men in the commercial seem cast from a Henry Nicholas pool party and the women from a cargo ship container full of eastern Europeans. So when you watch the clip below and the woman tells the man "You're so hot. Got Sunscreen?" and he responds: "Let's chill," please have pity and don't laugh too hard at Redmond's unluckiest.

A Defamer operative was kind enough to forward us his Arclight eNewsletter, and noticed that the prestige cineplex's snobby Classifications Committee has deemed the R-Rated M. Night Shyamalan's *SPOILER ALERT* eco- *END SPOILER ALERT* thriller The Happening a "comedy." We find this new trend beyond distressing, as studios and theater-owners are now taking it upon themselves to accelerate the crucial window that evolves a truly awful movie to camp-classic status. Clearly, there's too much revenue at stake from cutting-edge new upstarts like the Flopz channel to merely let the audience sort the so-bad-it's-bads from the so-bad-it's-goods. [Arclight Cinemas]