Marines Have Plenty of Money, Few Marines

The United States Marine Corps is a proud institution, and they would like you to know that. They would, um, also like you to consider joining, not that they have a recruiting problem at all. Nope, the whole war thing isn’t affecting their recruiting at all, which is why they’ve bought ad time during tonight’s American Idol episode and next week’s AFC championship on Fox. By the way, that AI ad time was estimated last season to cost about $750,000 for a 30-second spot. Wait, shoot, I lost my train of thought. Am I amused and cynical that the Marines are buying hugely expensive ad time on shows popular with today’s youth to try to drum up more recruits, or pissed that they’re buying more than a million dollars worth of it from Rupert Murdoch’s Fox? It’s so hard to decide sometimes. [PR Newswire, NY Times]