If It Seems Too Good to be True...

When Oprah gave away cars this past week to members of her studio audience, it was lauded as an incredible act of generosity. Well, not so fast. Turns out that the media maven neglected to pay taxes on those cars... sticking some of those recipients with tax bills as high as $7,000. Some gift!

Seems like the biggest beneficiary of that stunt was Pontiac, whose website saw a spike in traffic after the Oprah episode (the cars she "gave away" were Pontiac G-Sixes). Meanwhile, MSNBC's Countdown has a video clip on the trend toward "extreme advertising" that takes increasingly creative -- and often bizarre -- approaches in grabbing our attention. I've written about this trend here before. Also, check out this piece from Money magazine on "ass-vertising," "bra-vertising" and "dog-vertising." Don't ask, just read the damn article...

(MSIE 6 and Microsoft Media Player required to view the video clip)