Raping the dead (metaphorically, not the gross kind)

First off, a big apology to those who read this title and sprinted to my blog, no doubt panting in anticipation of explicit tales of necrophilia. I assure you, there is nothing for you here.

No, this is a rant, a long-withheld rant on the commercial practice of taking dead celebrities and re-animating them, in a manner of speaking, to sell a new product. The most recent instigator of this ire is a popcorn commercial, in which the earnest face of Orville Redenbacher is uncerimoniously planted atop the body of someone else, someone who is trying to sell popcorn while simultaneously shaking his groove thang to his iPod. It's not enough to raise and subjugate the deceased; we are no longer content with this. We must contemporize them in the process... for, if we fail to do this, who will buy popcorn? The same people who've been purchasing popcorn their entire lives? Please. Existing markets are so last year.

Poor Orville isn't the first to be indentured into this kind of post-mortem puppeteering, no sir. Loved ones may well remember my ire over Audrey Hepburn being forced into doing her Funny Girl dance for a thoroughly soulless Gap ad. And then there's a less recent -- but memorably lengthy -- commercial for insurance featuring Fred and Ethel Merks. And, of course, there's the granddaddy of them all, Fred Astair dancing with a vacuum cleaner in a mid-90's ad.

So, why stop there? Where do the rules of decency end? Why not use any deceased celebrity or pseudo-celebrity to sell your wares? For any of you ad execs that might have accidentally stumbled across this blog in your search for necrophilia, here's a few suggestions:

• Princess Di for Absolut Vodka.
• John Denver for American Airlines.
• Mama Cass for Jimmy Dean Country-Baked Ham.
• Hunter S. Thompson for Smith & Wesson.
• John Candy, Chris Farley and John Belushi for Kentucky Fried Chicken.
• David Spade for eHarmony. I know, he's not dead, but he's dead inside.

C'mon, people, don't let me down.