So I was listening to the radio the other day, having a moderately pleasant drive home from work and thinking of buying my first pair of cowboy boots, when I heard the commercial. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by hunger . . ." it began. I was struck dumb. This can't be, I thought. I'm hearing things. And then it went on, but instead of stanzas about draft lines and the madness of war, I heard paeans to the fine foods offered by Wendy's restaurants. That's right, apparently a Frosty is the way to cure all your existential ills. Road rage overtook me, and I practically swerved into a four-wheeler. Steam poured from my ears just like in the cartoons. Someone had taken the poem "Howl," Allen Ginsberg's radical protest piece, and turned it into a commercial for a single hamburger with cheese.

(growl)

The thing that really galls me is that somebody smart wrote this. Some smart ad agency goon, who gave up his English career because of the paucity of financial prospects (can't blame him there), decided to infuse a little culture into the merchandising of his favorite fast food. Trouble is, this kind of doggerel doesn't elevate Wendy's restaurants or their products in any way. Brilliance doesn't rub off that easily. You see, Ginsberg was a man with a profound distrust of all things monetary, and the Wendy's overlords—no doubt draped in furs and sporting Viking helmets—are using him to peddle the kind of substandard pablum I wouldn't feed to my pet muskrat, Swedenborg. You hear that weird whirring sound? Yeah, Ginsberg's rolling in his grave, all right, and I bet if you harnessed the wind output you'd have enough power to keep a city running for a year.

I like to think that if Dante were still around, (apart from having a nasty case of arthritis) he'd rewrite the Inferno to include a section of hell for people who exploit and expropriate great literature for profit. Where would they be sent? Would it be level 6, where the heretics are trapped in flaming tombs, or perhaps level 9, where those guilty of treachery lie forever encased in ice with only their heads protruding? Look, parody is one thing. I adore parody. I cherish it, even. But it is unconscionable to take something beautiful and make a total obscene mockery of it in an effort to sell cheeseburgers.

(double growl)

My one consolation with this "Howl" redux business is that not many people are going to get the commercial. I mean, is Wendy's setting its sights on the college professor crowd? Those listeners who have never read the Beats will likely be too confused by the recitation to remember what the commercial is about, and those of us who do get it will likely follow our cravings to the Burger King next door, just for spite.

So a pox on you, you effete ad-monkeys, you soulless mercenaries of corporate imperialism. You're not fooling anyone with your flea-bitten, second-hand erudition. Everyone knows that Ginsberg was the essence of hip; while at Wendy's, even the burgers are square.

Tags: popculture