At exactly the same moment Obama was seducing 69.5 million voters, another iconic figure was -- out of all common sense and experience -- capturing my own heart. I refer, of course, to Flo -- the Progressive insurance lady.

This horror story, shocking though it is, began with a simple question: All else being equal, would expensively produced video ads fare better or worse online than unbranded user-generated videos harvested from the Internet and simply shared by brands? And then it took a ghastly turn into the shadowy world of online video seeding.

What a fantastic idea -- to spend a couple of million dollars to send the hottest babe ever into outer space to extinguish a star threatening to destroy Earth. Congratulations for racking up almost 5 million YouTube views in only three months. But please return it to our decade, where it belongs.