Mad Ads

A new commercial released this week by mayoral candidate Maura Hennigan depicts Boston Mayor Thomas Menino as King Lear and compliant city workers, real estate developers and interest groups as his three daughters, professing their love even as they disdain the tired and aging politician.

The thinly veiled take on Shakespeare’s play follows on the heels of a Hennigan advertisement released last week that was a takeoff of Robert McCloskey’s children’s book “Make Way for Ducklings.”  The McCloskey commercial upset some, such as artist Nancy Schon, whose bronze sculptures of parading ducklings are a popular attraction in the city’s Public Garden. Schon called the ad “disgraceful” and said it was destroying a book about “''families and lovely things.”

Fans of the Bard were similarly aghast. “I’ll never be able to do Shakespeare again,” said sometime actor Scott Olivier, speaking with reporters at Menino’s headquarters.  “Does this woman Hennigan have any conscience at all?  To destroy the greatest works of English literature, ruining Shakespeare for future generations, all for petty political power, is unspeakable.”

Meanwhile, the Menino campaign made public its own commercial, a send-up of the Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles.” In the ad, the blonde-haired Hennigan makes her appearance as useless but quickly multiplying tribbles that threaten to take over a starship -- in this case, one that looks remarkably like Boston.  Menino plays a Captain Kirk-like figure who is determined to save his ship. With wit and derring-do, he eventually does so, beaming the Hennigan-tribbles outside of the city, a fate remarkably similar to the one that befell his challenger of four years ago, former city councilor (and now Dedham resident) Peggy Davis Mullen.

Dweeb Johnson, president of the Star Trek Fan Club, met with reporters while holding a phaser aimed directly at his head. “The greatest television series of all time lies in tatters, simply because of some hack Boston politician. Star Trek has been my life.  Now, with this travesty of an ad, my life is over,” he said, as he pulled the trigger.

Additional commercials are rumored to be in the works. Hennigan is reportedly preparing an ad depicting Menino as a Godzilla-like creature destroying Boston’s neighborhoods.  Menino has one portraying himself as Jesus being stoned by a mob of Hennigan supporters. Fans of Japanese movies and Christian fundamentalists all professed themselves ready to be appalled as soon as the ads were released.