Too much money in U.S. politics?

When it’s all said and done, America will spend roughly $3 billion on Thanksgiving dinners this year — 50 percent of it on turkeys alone.

That’s a whole lot of white meat and cranberry sauce — not to mention the food comas. The $3 billion doesn’t even account for the billions more spent on Thanksgiving-themed advertising or the many billions spent on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. All in all, we’re talking well more than $20 billion spent by advertisers and their customers in a sliver of late November.

Despite the occasional outcry against the commercialization of a sentimental family holiday, no one seriously speaks out against corporate ads about the turkey sale at the Albertsons, Kmart’s Black Friday specials or Dallas Cowboy promos for Thanksgiving football.

As Americans, we accept corporate advertising as a way of life in a free-market economy. Why? Because we know there’s a choice: No matter how slickly produced the commercial, we ultimately buy what we want. That Tofurky ad isn’t forcing you to toss your turducken, is it?

Read the full articles at the Las Vegas Review-Journal.