It was the lunge seen round the world: Senator Marco Rubio got cottonmouth during his live, televised response to President Obama's State of the Union address. So Rubio suddenly lurched left of camera range to gulp a spot of Poland Spring water.

Last year, Chrysler won the Super Bowl with a powerful, head-turning spot that seemed to sneak up out of nowhere, as opposed to those prelaunched on social media. Created by Wieden & Kennedy, it featured a grizzled Clint Eastwood delivering a half-time pep talk for America, a message that, as it turned out, could have doubled as an ad for Obama's reelection. In advertising, there's always a pendulum swing. My theory for this year is that Chrysler wanted to repeat the surprise, emotion, and beauty of the previous year's Big Game successes, except this time without the messy excess leftyness.

"Barbara Lippert owes an apology to every single non-black Jamaican for implying that they do not exist!" That's a snippet of one of the more polite notes of the hundreds I've received since Monday morning, when I appeared on the "Today Show" to discuss the early release of VW's "Get Happy" Super Bowl commercial.

I was watching Rachel Maddow last night when the new-ish corporate commercial for Coke, called "Coming Together," came on the screen.

What a week for semi-confessionals, bizarre attempts at damage control, and angry stabs at absolution. Actually, I'm not referring to Coca-Cola's decision to address the problem of obesity in these here United States in a new ad campaign that asks us to "come together." In an age requiring authenticity, there are some things mega-global corporations selling sugar water just can't be transparent about.

This week, Sony Pictures Television announced that Jerry Seinfeld's "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" was renewed for a second season. Wait -- "season" and "renewed?" Them's TV words, alright, although the series -- 10 episodes in the first year, 24 on order for the second -- is strictly an online affair.

"Django" can be a hard pill to swallow. Of course it's offensive to think of slavery as the subject of an exciting new action-entertainment genre for Tarantino to use for fun and profit. But the ironic thing is that, unlike the very respectful and respectable "Lincoln," "Django" has really gotten audiences talking about the onerous subject of slavery.