I'm afraid the answer is Madison Avenue. The question is, what are those GEICO caveman TV ads all about? That they're well done, hilarious and ubiquitous is obvious. But what are they about? What is this insurrection? Who are the cavemen supposed to be? Aborigine yuppie scum? Are we supposed to hate them or love them and why? And any advertising campaign that features a caveman visiting his therapist and taking a cell phone call from his mother, telling his therapist, "I'll put it on speaker" is asking to be asked what's this all about, really?

Whatever it is it's gay. And by gay I mean metrosexual. And by metrosexual I mean any straight man who looks gay and doesn't care. The GEICO cavemen are too J. Crew casually well dressed, too snarky, too entitled, too impossibly hateable to be anything other than a specific example of some despised cliche within existing humanoids. What are these cavemen trying to prove? That they've been there, done that? Seen it all? Been forgotten? Upset at nobody noticing their contributions to rudimentary human accomplishments? These caveman TV commercial catch phrases are as iconic as "Where's the beef?" and "Step away from the chaluppah." yet their meaning is challenging, even disturbing. "I'll have the roast duck with the mango salsa," says the first caveman in response to the GEICO guy's apology. And the second caveman steals that scene by handing the menu back to the waiter dismissively. "I'm sorry I don't have much of an appetite.'' while giving the GEICO guy a look that could stop time. What the commercials are clearly not about is automobile insurance.

In my larger imagination, I see this enigmatic TV commercial phenomenon as being quite positive, like the coming of the anti-ad. The faux meaning exposed. The truth revealed. But what is faux? And who is foe? Who are we supposed to identify with? The caveman who says, "You know I'm not 100 percent in love with your tone" or the parody Fox cable channel talking head who says, "Looks like somebody woke up on the wrong side of the rock."? The newest GEICO caveman ad has the same combative cable TV news channel split screen confrontation, with the caveman's only comment being an exasperated, "What?!" Whatever. Maybe the meaning of of these ads is no more complex than the lyrics of a Kinks song: "I'm an ape man, I'm an ape ape man, I'm an ape man."