"I started to walk down the street when I heard a voice saying: 'Good evening, Mr. Dowd.' I turned, and there was this big white rabbit leaning against a lamp-post. Well, I thought nothing of that, because when you've lived in a town as long as I've lived in this one, you get used to the fact that everybody knows your name."
The Chase credit card company runs a series of commercials in which couples relay outrageous travel tales to their friends; we became fast friends with Chevy Chase, our son discovered a dinosaur, etc. The friends are stunned...because the couple was able to use its frequent flier miles on a whim, over a holiday and to a desirable destination.
In this commercial for Faygo Sugar-Free Redpop, football legend Alex Karras is seen eating a platter of pizza. An off-screen voice comments that he thought Alex was on a diet. Alex then tells him that he was on a diet, proceeding to shill the Sugar-Free Redpop. It leads to this bit of dialogue afterwards.
Off-screen voice: Yeah, but Alex... what about the pizza?
Alex: (looks at pizza, then smiles at the camera) Faygo doesn't make pizza.
A 1985 spot for GMAC financing shows a couple at a car dealer requesting financing for a Pontiac Fiero. This sparks a swarm of miscues as the head of financing (and the Christmas Club; which he covers with a financing sign as the couple enters) thinks they are asking about an Italian car. The would-be customers then clarify it was a Pontiac; then reference the other brands General Motors produced at the time — only for a second guy to mention that those were "not Italian cars". After all this (and the announcer spiel); the first guy now thinks the couple is buying a large number of cars and adds that they need to know what they were intending to do with all those cars.
A State Farm commercial has two friends walking home from the grocery store while trying to lug several sacks of groceries a piece (and obviously having some difficulty). They discuss the price of groceries, and one explains that he can afford it with all the money he saved by switching his car insurance to State Farm. The other asks, incredulously, "You have a CAR?"
It is a common theme for a prophet to accuse religious leaders of doing this because they were more interested in being Obstructive Bureaucrats than in being Good Shepherds.
Micah 6:7-8:Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, [or] with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn [for] my transgression, the fruit of my body [for] the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what [is] good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
Samuel does this in a big way when Saul spares some of the Amalekites and their livestock (which God had previously ordered completely destroyed for their crimes against the Hebrews during the Exodus). Saul says, more or less "I offered the usual sacrifices," and then Samuel more or less flies at him:
1 Samuel 15:22-Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as in hearkening to the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice!
Samuel then went to the Amalekite king Agag and "hewed him in pieces," saying (implicitly), "this is the point, you idiot! Just why did I ever make you king?"
Jesus said it very well when speaking of the Pharisees who forgot the meaning of the law was to show mercy and faith in Matthew 23:24 'Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.'
There is a reason he tries to keep any and all material regarding him hidden from mortal eyes as much as possible.
Theatre
In Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy when Bruce makes a reference to horses in the play "Equus" and his blind date (through the personals) Prudence says he should be a vet, Bruce rebukes her for missing the metaphor and says he could never respect anyone who missed a metaphor.
For those not in the know: The play Equus concerns a young man whose religious/sexual obsession with horses drives him to blind six of them by driving a metal spike into their eyes.
In the musical and Showtime movie of Reefer Madness the main characters sing about how much they are like Romeo and Juliet. They even state that they haven't read the ending, but they're 'sure it turns out real swell.'
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