The Tour de France: A bike race? Or, a commercial fest?

I’ve been a long time fan of the TDF ever since Greg Lemond won his first yellow jersey in 1984 (I was 17). It was always a huge challenge to watch this iconic race since here in the US, it didn’t really gain enough popularity until Lance Armstrong started winning races to be covered by US media. For a time, I was relegated to downloading stages and was excited when I found a file that included Paul and Phil. But, today I can watch on NBCSN every year and even catch a few other grand tours. But, at what cost?

The Mortgage Commercials

Stop complaining that your landlord can’t fix anything. Have you ever been a homeowner? Do you know how to fix a leaky roof or a plugged drain? During the last week I was burdened with a waterfall of plumbing issues. First the dishwasher, then a leak in the basement, and finally a clogged drain. Either I buy a 25′ snake and clean up the hair and oil clogs or I spend $500 on a plumber. You’d better get off your butt and figure out how to fix that leaky roof before you consider home ownership.

The Exercise Commercials

If you fall for buying a mirror with a TV in it or a huge indoor bike that tips, damn! I’m really sorry. You’ve been duped! How many ways can companies invent to take your hard earned money? It’s nuts!

First, you can pretty much find a full length mirror for free and while sometimes it’s helpful to watch and discipline your form, for the most part, I don’t want to watch  myself trying to dance and looking a fool. And, I certainly don’t need to spend $1500 to do it. My free mirror and my $200 TV (that I can watch TV shows on too) suffice.

I don’t need to tell most of you that when a stationary bike tilts it’s just going to feel like your tipping over. Physics 101 here, when you’re cornering on a bike, the center of gravity doesn’t change, it is redirected by the centripetal forces. If you tried tilting when at a stop, you fall down. Geesh! Look, the bike leaning thing is an illusion of realism to get you to spend more money on something that serve a purpose to only get you to spend more money.

The Peloton bike comes in at about $3000 and on top of that, in order to use it, you must spend an additional membership of $39 per month and you cannot use your screen to play any other videos except from those on the server. When the pitchman says, “Welcome to the family!” I want to laugh. Manipulative turds.

The Social Justice Commercials

What does it mean when a shaver company doubles the cost of women’s shavers  over men’s and then tries to preach to men about how to treat women?

What does it mean to champion someone? “We don’t just champion bikes, we champion you.” How is that exactly possible? I really like USA Cycling, but, this commercial is simply loaded with clichés making is disingenuous at best.

My son just got his first job out of high school at Starbucks and his training encouraged him, a 17 year old making $11 per hour, to talk with customers about race and sexual identities with customers in order to forward their social justice commercial campaigns (the young girl who identifies as a boy.) Starbucks, a multi-billion dollar corporation wants their “partners” (that’s what they call their employees) to bring up controversial subjects with customers in order to align with their corporate messaging. It’s not about the message, it’s about the money and double dipping on their advertizing.

The Tour de France

And after all that, you get to watch the tour for about 60 seconds and then back to the commercials.

Go Cav!

Go Sepp!