Bill's Pills

By Tony Kornheiser

Sunday, October 20 1996; Page F01

The Washington Post

Remember a few weeks ago when Bill Clinton refused to release his complete medical

records because of something in there that was said to be "embarrassing"?

Wow. Immediately there was speculation that the president had:

1. A tattoo of Donna Shalala on his behind.

2. Hemorrhoids the size of a salad bowl.

3. Hooters.

It turns out it was none of the above. Clinton gave a detailed interview about his health to the

New York Times last week, and there appeared to be nothing embarrassing in his records.

(Unless you count the time that he dropped bad acid at a Who concert in 1974 and freaked

out so bad that he ended up in a hall closet under a pile of winter coats pretending to be

galoshes. Oh, come on, I'm kidding -- it was a Moby Grape concert.)

But after reading the article closely, I realized the Times missed the big story. Lost in the

middle of a big paragraph about the president's medications was the fact that he takes . . .

Claritin.

Surely you've seen the ads for Claritin. They're on TV and in magazines, and on buses and in

subways. Most of them feature a beautiful woman with a porcelain complexion, staring into a

lovely blue sky. They tell you: "For a clear day." But they never tell you exactly what Claritin

is. Bill Clinton may be the only person in America who knows.

I thought Claritin was either a contact lens cleaner or windshield wiper fluid.

On TV and radio, the ads are unbelievably coy. They actually have someone saying, "I didn't

even know what Claritin was until I asked my doctor about it."

That eliminated windshield wiper fluid. I mean, why would I ask my doctor about windshield

wiper fluid? I wouldn't ask my mechanic about a hernia.

I came to work the next day and asked about the ads. Everyone had seen them. No one

knew what Claritin was.

"Zit cream," someone guessed.

"Acid reflux, you know, for that unpleasant burning sensation."

"Toe fungus ointment."

"Makeup from France."

"Nose hair depilatory."

It's interesting, isn't it, that a company would go to such lengths not to tell you what its

product does. What kind of strategy is this? Imagine an ad for Hoover vacuum cleaners that

would show the product, but instead of having someone, say, cleaning a rug, the ad would

feature an attractive model with the hose around her neck, like a boa. She would be wearing

a propeller beanie, grinning seductively and holding a sandwich. In the background, a '50s

band would be playing "Mack the Knife." This wouldn't work.

Claritin, however, is not the first product to use incomprehensibility as a tool. My friend

Nancy said, "This is like when I was a girl, and there were Kotex ads, and I never knew what

Kotex was. There was a ballerina en pointe, and the ad said, "Kotex. Because." "Because

what?" The last product like this was Infiniti. Remember how the advertising campaign

consisted exclusively of beautiful pictures of water, rocks, trees and birds? I had no inkling

Infiniti was a car. I thought it was a camera, or a nose hair depilatory.

My feeling was that if a company had a product that was so secret they couldn't even tell you

what it did -- then it is practically illegal! It has to be GREAT! I made plans to go out and get

huge gobs of Claritin -- you know, see lots of different doctors and make up symptoms to

wheedle multiple prescriptions, like an addict -- and then I would rub it on my head to grow

hair, and dunk my face in it to eliminate unsightly blemishes and I would eat it and it would

lower my cholesterol, and I'd put it in my gas tank and significantly reduce engine wear.

I eventually discovered what Claritin is by asking my daughter, who is 13. She had heard a

rumor in school that it is an antihistamine. So I mentioned this to my friend Gino, and it turns

out that his daughter had heard the same rumor in her school.

Follow me here. We have a product that is the subject of a multimillion-dollar multimedia ad

campaign, and we learn what it does via the suburban adolescent grapevine. The last time I

got solid information through that route, it involved smoking bananas.

Alas (I love writing the word "alas." It's a terrific word. Like "ere" and "shall." Nobody ever

uses them anymore, alas), I now know for sure what Claritin is. I called the manufacturer.

Our daughters were right. It is, in fact, an antihistamine and a decongestant. It's neither an

aphrodisiac nor a diet pill, so I've got no idea why Clinton takes it.

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