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Life, unfortunately, imitates art

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I know this isn’t a political story, but I hope you’ll indulge a little Friday diversion.

Many of you may have seen the Diet Pepsi commercial that originally aired during the Super Bowl featuring P. Diddy, In it, P. Diddy’s car breaks down on route to an awards show and a Diet Pepsi truck driver picks him up and brings him to the event, literally dropping him off onto the red carpet in front of throngs of fans and photographers. The punch line was seeing a variety of other celebrities rush out to buy similar gigantic semi cabs, as if P. Diddy had done this intentionally to start a new trend, which they were anxious to follow.

As commercials go, it was largely inoffensive. It even had a half-way clever point about the influence of celebrities in shaping public tastes, even when their preferences are absurd.

The commercial seems to have particular significance this week, in light of a painful item in the current issue of Newsweek.

If you’re going to sport one of those mesh-backed, foam-front trucker hats, you might as well buy the truck to go with it. Ashton Kutcher did. He’s one of a handful of celebs who’ve recently purchased the International CXT (Commercial Extreme Truck), a seven-ton-plus, 220-horsepower, 70-gallon diesel pickup. The CXT is so large that New York is one of a handful of states that requires a commercial driver’s license to operate it.

[…]

The initial targets for this vehicle were small-business owners who wanted to run their landscaping and contracting companies in style, but the CXT has become somewhat of a novelty for rich guys — the ultimate toy for the Sunset Boulevard set.

This monstrosity is similar in height to an 18-wheeler and can tow more than six tons. Go look at the picture and you’ll see the damn thing could easily crush a Hummer, which can crush regular SUVs, which can crush cars.

Maybe the “Sunset Boulevard set” is confused, but the Diet Pepsi ad was a joke. The fact that people are buying these things over-sized eyesores is a trend that needs to stop. Now.