I have never cried so much over paper towels.
But set me in front of the Olympics during commercials, and I am a mess.
There is something about the Olympics that brings out the best in advertisers.
Most advertisers, anyway.
Procter & Gamble has stepped up its game. I have never felt such a strong, overwhelming urge to call my mother as during their ads. "Thank you!" I sob into the phone. "Thank you for supporting me on the parallel rings!"
"What parallel rings?" she asks. "Are you drunk? Who is this?"
The Super Bowl is for experimentation and flair. But the Olympics are for sturdy, yet poignant commercials about the triumph of the human spirit.
There is soft piano. Morgan Freeman is narrating something. You feel proud.
And then come the political ads.
Suddenly ominous music is playing and a hand-lettered sign is asking me what happened to President Barack Obama's stimulus money. "While Americans waited for help, billions were spent in foreign countries," the narrator says.
Obama's own ads are not much better. I'm terrified to be a woman now.
I understand that conventional wisdom has it that you are supposed to sway undecided voters with negative advertising. I have difficulty picturing these voters.
Who are they? Who are these people who say, "I don't know, unless I hear something really ominous about one of these guys, I'm not going to the polls."
Of course, that isn't how it works. Studies have found that the difference made by negative advertising is so small as to be almost negligible. Almost.
You never see anyone excited to be voting for the lesser of two evils.
A poll found that 78 percent of Americans were frustrated by the negative tone the campaign has taken. I don't like to feel that the people running for president are like mountain goats grappling for the tiniest possible advantage. Certainly not during the Olympics, when I should be weeping over absorbent towels.
Petri writes for The Washington Post.