And now, an open letter of love to Ellen Degeneres for this video. It’s four minutes…it’s worth it. Check it below:

A love letter for the following reasons: she does not, in fact, do this kind of thing all the time; if she had a hilarious skewery video every week, it’d be one thing but this is more than just the latest Funny Or Die.

I assume her lead-in about being asked to be the spokesperson is true. While she would never have actually endorsed it outright, she could easily have been one of those celebrities who declines but agrees to be seen holding the product “by accident” or in passing.    

She could have made the reasonable choice not to upset anyone. After all, sooner or later someone in the Bic corporation would want to buy advertising or sponsor something, right? She might easily have agreed with a half-dozen nervous producers who uneasily said the roasting of these things might “look bad”. Believe me, whenever these kinds of things come up, there are always nervous people worrying. 

But she didn’t.

She included the fact that she’d been asked to endorse the product. She made a video that was long enough the point could not be missed. She included just the right Massengill outfits, since that’s basically what we’re talking about here, who are we kidding. She hired a tween actor to play the daughter, which means she had to explain the joke (though chances are the kid gets it just fine), thereby paying it forward.

In short, she ripped them a hilarious new one. Smart, funny, and playing by her own rules. Ellen’s far from the only one – there are literally thousands of mocking reviews on Amazon – and yeah, sure, it’s that much easier to roast something when you have your own show to do it on. Does that take away from the fact that she said something – the right something?    

You know what? Good. People are paid extremely high salaries to be funny and to entertain us and point out the things that are ridiculous about our lives. Women who are comedians are still rare enough that their insight into the bullsh-t being bandied around is valuable. This is what it should cost to be a celebrity. There should be a social responsibility.  

And notice how much nicer it goes down when there’s a spoonful of humour and a stuffed dog involved? How much of Ellen’s audience do you think was delighted?  How many of them would be horrified if you described them with the “f” word?

Attached - Ellen was awarded the Mark Twain Prize For American Humour in Washington on Monday.