EDITORIAL - One "urging" resolution urgently needed

The Cebu Provincial Board which, like its counterpart the Cebu City Council, is always on the lookout for national issues to ride on with “urging” resolutions instead of looking out for things to do in its own backyard, has found precisely another issue to jump on.

This time, the board is “urging” the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board to recall and stop a television commercial of the courier company LBC ostensibly because of its “negative” effect on students.

The commercial depicts a spelling bee scene in which a contestant is asked to spell “remittance,” in obvious reference to one of the services rendered by LBC. The student, after some thinking, spells the word out as L-B-C, to which Edu Manzano, the host, cries “tumpak.”

The commercial used humor to send its message, and everybody but the Cebu Provincial Board clearly saw that. Even poor spellers know remittance is not spelled as LBC. So, whatever good intentions the board may have had in its “urging” resolution is better directed elsewhere.

In fact, since we are on the subject of commercials, here is one which we suggest the board better spend its energies on. It involves a commercial by one of the more popular brands of multivitamins which can mislead people into believing is insurance against swine flu.

As we all know, vitamins, especially Vitamin C, can help boost the immune system of the body, and the commercial correctly points this out. But when it goes on to say it helps boost your immunity against the swine flu virus, that can be dangerously misleading.

At a time when people are on the verge of hysteria over the global threat of the AH1N1 flu virus, promoting a product as something that can boost immunity against the threat can be mistaken as guaranteeing immunity against the virus. And that can be very dangerous.

So, if the Cebu Provincial Board, and the Cebu City Council as well, is up for another “urging” resolution, maybe it can bark up the right tree this time and urge the proper agencies to see if this particular commercial has not stretched “truth in advertising” too thin.