WASHINGTON, DC — In an attempt to gain some credibility while explaining where $350 billion of the $700 billion banking bailout fund disappeared to, the Treasury Department (motto: “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”) is planning to purchase commercial time during the upcoming Super Bowl broadcast in front of what it hopes will be a large drunk-but-forgiving television viewing audience,
“I’m thinking frogs croaking out the words “Fred! Dee! Mooawk!” says Treasury Secretary Henry “Bud” Paulson. “Or maybe some pigeons flying over that bull statue on Wall Street and making deposits. Get it? Deposits? This is gonna be great!”
The 30-second ad during Super Bowl XLIII will cost $3 million, but NBC is expected to give the Treasury Department a discount in return for allowing the network to write off the entire 2008 prime time schedule as a loss. “They’re hurting for ad buyers this season,” said Paulson. “I’m not sure why.”
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben “Gentle” Bernanke doesn’t think the commercial should be funny. “We need to take the Apple approach,” says Bernanke. “A hot chick running across the floor of the New York Stock Exchange swinging a hammer than she throws at a giant safe where all the loot is hidden. Wait a minute … that’s not where it is, is it?”
Timothy Geithner, expected to be President-elect Obama’s Treasury Secretary, thinks he should get to decide on the ad since the game is on February 1 when Obama will be in office. “I want chimpanzees dressed in suits to look like bankers,” says Geithner. “Or is the other way around better? And then they have to eat potato chips with Dan Quayle. Is he still alive?”
NBC has already alerted the public works departments in all major U.S. cities that the commercial will run at the end of the first quarter, so they can be prepared for the largest simultaneous mass flushing since the farting Clydesdale.