Madonna caused ripples when she released her new video American Dream, because people thought it was anti-American. The new video has Madonna singing to lyrics like:

American life
I live the American dream
You are the best thing I've seen,
You are not just a dream.

And you see flags of different countries waving in the background. The video ends with the American flag, of course.

The question is- is it really anti-American, and pro-Iraq? Madonna of course denied it. But the lyrics of the song do mean something. It doesn't sound like she's anti-American, but anti-materialist, with a little mockery of the American obsession with superficiality- Do I need to lose some weight? (The obsession with losing weight is well-known, even Monica Lewinsky's trysts with desserts weren't spared).

If you pay close attention to the lyrics, especially the part where she raps about having everything possible to be a star (nannies, bodyguards, sylists), and ending with Do you think I'm satsfied?, you can't help but think that she really isn't satisfied with what she has, and satisfaction isn't all just about having all those things which Americans would die for. Or are they just random lyrics?

NDTV conducted a poll in Baghdad on what Iraqis thought of US invasion of their country.

Here are a couple of important stats:

Number of respondents: 1000

Population of Iraq: 24,001,816 (July 2002 est.)

Does 1000 people out of 24,001,816 signify much? My calculator tells me 1000 people corresponds to 0.004166% of the Iraqi population. Less than 0.05% of the population can hardly be representative of the population. So while the world rejoices or rejects the results of the poll (54% said that the US war to remove Saddam Hussein was right), they forget that the poll may actually signify nothing.

Of course, all opinion polls across the world are conducted with such meagre figures. And then their results are publicised and upheld like the gospel truth. But I doubt if such polls deserve so much attention. They are so often misleading. On the one hand, you'll have a poll declaring J Lo the sexiest woman, a few days later, she will be replaced by someone else and slip to No. 5. I have never heard of people losing their sex appeal in a matter of days).

NDTV described the poll exercise as "not an easy task". Of course it wasn't an easy task. Scouring the streets and talking to people in a war-torn country is not a piece of cake. The correspondents surveyed 1000 people, and for that they deserve a pat on the back.

But the results cannot be vouched for as the true sentiment of the people, because a thousand people don't comprise Iraq.

Last year, Mumbai saw a sudden splurge of hoardings and advertisements of something called Click. It was supposedly the smarter choice. The print ads had a picture of the product- a flat, round, green box. Something like a chewing gum roll box. Click is nothing but a small tobacco packet whih a person places under his/her tongue, when aching to smoke, but can't (like in a public place).

The concept of all Click ads was this- a picture with someone important missing, like the groom, or a jockey. The punchline was- Gone for a Smoke?.

Some advertising professionals called it bad advertising- simply because they believed it was a bad ad. But even more appalling was the reaction of young people toward the ad. For them, Click with its attractive packaging and bad, yet prominent ads, was something to check out. So promos are meant to appeal- but what about the tobacco ones? Are the warnings enough?

Whether tobacco and cigarette ads be banned is the current debate in many social and business circles. I doubt if there can ever be a conclusive answer to this question.