Since when did spelling bees become a major mass media theme and topic of universal inquiry?

They’re still boring, right?

We had Spellbound, then Bee Season, and now Akeelah and the Bee (and its pimped-out but fundamentally off-kilter Starbucks viral campaign).

That’s not my point.

What I’d like to discuss is the Frosted Mini Wheats commercial, which, obviously, takes place at the hub of all that is human and real–
the spelling bee.

So the little girl gets doled the word “aardvark.”
She begins: “Aardvark. A— R…”

Then the Mini-Wheat-with-Arms-and-Eyes weasels his sugar-coated, fibrous self all up in her grill: “the first word in the dictionary, remember?”

You lousy fricking piece of boastful cereal who is not even close to being as cool as Tony or Toucan Sam… and just forget Count Chocula, brotha-man:
THAT IS SOOOO CHEATING!

And the judges don’t even say “sit down, little bitch,” when she starts the word over. That is not allowed. Once you say a letter, you cannot renege it. We all know that.
Note to Kellogg’s: Your audience will not sit in silence as we see you slander the new “it” pastime of our current cultural episteme.

Baseball games, apple pie, and antediluvian vivisepulture.
Now that’s America.

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