Happy Thanksgiving! Brought To You By...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! 

[This Thanksgiving greeting is brought to you by Firestone; tires that can kill you, but at least we're sort of made in America.]

It's a day designed for enjoying time with your family, and consuming mass quantities of overweight poultry until you too are an overweight bird. 

[This Thanksgiving quip is brought to you by the makers of Zoloft; You're not really depressed until you're Zoloft depressed.]

Of course, this day has suffered serious incursions by what Alfred in "Miracle on 34th Street" decried by saying "there's a lot of bad isms in the woild, but the woist of them is commoicialism."

[This Thanksgiving movie reference is brought to you by GM; The only thing worse than the handling of our cars is our handling of money.]

One of the worst is the usurpation of the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.

[This Thanksgiving event is brought to you by the Sony film "Arthur Christmas"; another insipid holiday cartoon your kids will insist you buy no matter how bad it sucks.]

Instead of a joyful and kid-thrilling trot around New York with marching bands and Underdog floats, it has become just another platform to advertise, with special emphasis on shilling for the dozens of tiresome Broadway shows by allowing unknown performers from those musicals to interrupt the parade's flow by stopping to dance and lip-sync a number from some soon-to-be-closing Tony runner-up.  The hard part is figuring out which is worse, the dancing and singing about themes that have nothing to do with the holidays, or the gushing phony praise heaped on the tepid performances by the parade's 59 different D-list celebrity hosts.

[This Thanksgiving whine is brought to you by Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey; an annoying sissy concoction developed because not everyone is man enough to drink straight Jack Daniels, and we need more moonshine money.]

Then you have the annual NFL football games, which honor the proud tradition of watching the Detroit Lions getting their brains bashed in by whoever happens to be on the other side of the scrimmage line each year, including the Kansas City Chiefs cheerleaders (who, according to Yahoo, are the only thing on the field uglier than the Lions' play).  Even though the Lions started strong this year, they've returned to their losing ways, and a matchup against the undefeated Packers is sure to bring more of the same this go-round.

[This Thanksgiving football preview is brought to you by Chrysler; the company that has taken government bailouts twice, and still manages to overcharge for every vehicle we make, showing we have learned our lessons well from a government that frequently features $600 hammers.]

More commercialism will sneak into the NFL games, as they stop the action about every three plays to bring you...more commercials.  And that doesn't include the subliminal little ads they bombard us with, like the "Aflac Third Down" and the "Prudential Halftime Show."

[This Thanksgiving product placement is brought to you by AIG; we're the financial giant that ripped people off before the crash, ripped people off after the crash, and still convinced the government to give us more money. Don't you want somebody that smart working for you?]

The latest sad chapter in the commercialization of Thanksgiving is the incursion of the "Black Friday" shopping bacchanal into Thursday.  Impatient stores can't wait to stick their hands in your pockets, so they're forcing their slaves - er, employees - to work on a family holiday while selling goods for the prices they actually SHOULD be sold at all year long (and would be, if they weren't spending billions on advertising each quarter), just to lure you out of your recliner. 

[This Thanksgiving shopping moment is brought to you by Walmart; selling low quality Chinese goods and running mom and pop stores out of business since just after Sam died, long before China purchased the U.S., and the only company capable of making people want to actually punch a smiley face right in the mouth.]

Fortunately, a few people are fighting back by ignoring the slick televised parades in favor of putting on real parades in their hometowns, and boycotting concentration camp stores that insist their labor must work on the holiday or be shot.  ("Shot," "fired," it's about the same thing in this economy).

[This Thanksgiving protest is brought to you by Budweiser; The king of American beers, using proud American imagery to enrich a company that isn't even owned by Americans anymore, you stupid Americans.]

In spite of all this Scrooge-like anti-commercialism curmudgeonry regarding the overselling saturation of a uniquely American holiday (a diatribe which the Wall Street crowd will decry as a dangerous and subversive threat to capitalism), the spirit of the day remains in homes across the country, where friends and relatives will sit down together at a bountiful meal and take a moment to count their many blessings. 

[This Thanksgiving shout-out to Wall Street is brought to you by Fox Labs; "Keeping public parks empty since 2011."  The official pepper spray of the University of California - Davis campus police department.]

So enjoy your day, watch the 18 minutes of commercials per hour as allowed by the FCC, and count yourself as blessed that you live in a country where you have the freedom to worship as you please, speak your mind, and love your family.

[This Thanksgiving pathos is brought to you by Exxon; Producers of fine oils and lubricants to ease the pain of the screwing we're giving Americans and the world.]

Despite being inundated and blasted with commercialism from every corner, it's still a wonderful country, and a spiritually uplifting holiday.  Enjoy it, and remember to offer up a special "thank you" to the Man Upstairs, since prayer is one of the few remaining forms of communication that isn't overrun with ads and sponsorships.  Well, if you don't count Joel Osteen's Lakewood Baptist Church, the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the United Methodist Church, the Lutheran Church, the Satmar Synagogue, the Islamic Center of America, the Crystal Cathedral, the 700 Club...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!