I've already spoke of my great love for the Asahi ad featuring Dice Clay; its sheer awesomeness has dominated my baseball-starved mind for several days now. According to the blog To the People, however, the US government, in the form of Arthur Resnick, director of public and media affairs for the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, isn't so pleased: Resnick thinks that the ad may merit "punitive action," whatever that means, despite the fact that the ATTTB is an arm of the US government and Asahi broadcast the ad in Japan, which is, to my knowledge, not a part of the United States. Looking at the Herald article on the issue, it sounds like the "punitive action" would be brought against Major League Baseball, which authorized the use of the Red Sox logo in the ad.Even if that's the case (and I confess that for a moment I foolishly thought the punitive action would be against Dice Clay), the idea is, as they say in Boston, retahded, just like every half-assed attempt by the government to intervene in baseball. Can the MLB govern itself? Not really, if steroids is any indication, but I think they still do a lot better by themselves without the interference of politicians.
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