Lindsay Lohan is digging the bottom of the baby bottle to scrape together some cash. We’re not talking a couple of bucks either — we’re talking $100 million cool ones. She has tried — and failed — in fashion, and also as a DJ diva — so what else is a girl to do when her acting career has tanked? I imagine she was sitting around, rolling pennies and reflecting on where her life went wrong, and it wasn’t much of a stretch for her to leap to the lawsuit conclusion when all she had left was her ego.
Lindsay got her panties in a bunch after watching an e-Trade commercial. There was a reference to a “milk-a-holic” named Lindsay, and now she’s claiming a violation of her civil rights — the unauthorized use of her name and/or personality for advertising purposes — as well as two other common law claims.
I hadn’t even realized that Lindsay Lohan had become a one-named mecca — similar to that of Cher, Madonna or Oprah. Perhaps Miss Lohan believes that we all keep her on the forefront of our minds — in everything that we do. The possibility of pure coincidence in character naming, or that another Lindsay could exist within the confines of the e-Trade family — is outside her scope of reason. But, just for simplicity sakes, let’s give Lindsay a math lesson.
According to namestatistics.com, 0.06% of all females in the United States are named Lindsay. If we use the 2008 statistics, the population was 304, 059, 725, of which 50.7% were female. If I’ve done my math correctly — that’s about 92, 495 Lindsays — in the United States alone. Now, of course we have to take into consideration the “milk-a-holic” reference in the ad, and follow that obvious implication to alcohol. According to the World Health Organization, 15% of the U.S. population experiences alcohol related problems, with 4% being out-and-out alcoholics. For this example — we’ll use the 15% and assume that this “Lindsay” has had some sort of tangle with alcohol. Although, we all know that a jealous woman can be quickly provoked into name calling — even when the accusations are pure fabrication. Let’s also not forget that we are talking about an advertising work of fiction — where babies are married and spend their evenings at the local bar.
OK, so we’re looking at around 45,608, 958 people in the U.S. with some sort of alcohol affiliation. Women make up 1/3 of that number, giving us 15,050,956 drunk females. (I sense a lawsuit or very strong letter coming from AA members and women activists all over the world.) So, if .06% of all females in the U.S. are named Lindsay, that gives us a possible 9, 030 of drinking-Lindsays for e-Trade to choose from, if — in fact — they were modelling the reference after a real-life person.
The whole thing kind of stinks like sour milk. It’s a clever ad, and most of us never would have drawn the line to her, if Lindsay hadn’t stood up from her penny rolling and shouted, “Hey! That’s me! I’m the alcoholic whore they are talking about in that ad!”
Way to stand up for yourself Lindsay. I applaud your cunning with a great big shout out of “ATTA GIRL!” If you haven’t seen the ad, check it out here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEXZ2hfD3bU and see for yourself.
~uberscribbler
Punctuation gets a bad rap these days. There is little concern for the art and mastery of grammar in an acronym-texting world. We don’t even realize how much we are missing. There are some of us who break out in the sweats when we see a sign in a storefront with incorrect grammar or a wayward apostrophe dangling dangerously off a newspaper headline. There are even those of us — in that select group — who sneak about at night with permanent marker stained on our fingertips, creeping through the city restoring the balance of commas everywhere. Proper punctuation is just good manners and truly good manners are invisible. As Lynne Truss wrote so freely, they ease the way for others, without drawing the attention to themselves. How many friendships and relationships have been broken due to fundamental flaws in correct punctuation? Take this letter for example — written to Jack — from Jill, with an obvious loving message.
UberScribbler 