They may be the dumbest commercials on TV. The guy in his bathrobe waltzing around his neighborhood telling us that if we want our share of federal goodies, we better fill out that darn census form.

Or the really weird commercials that debuted during the Super Bowl where Ed Begley, Jr. and crew contemplate how to get a snapshot of everyone in America.

It didn't help:

As of early Friday, the mail participation rate was 68 percent. The mail participation rate, which the bureau is using this year for the first time, is the percentage of forms mailed back by households that received them.

Unlike the mail response rate, which the census used in earlier counts, it excludes forms returned by the postal service as undeliverable, often because a house or apartment was vacant. The mail response rate was 67 percent in 2000. If the undeliverable forms had been excluded then, the mail participation rate would have been 72 percent.

Trying to bribe people into returning their census forms by telling them their share of federal funds will increase is kind of creepy. 

My guess is a lot of other people thought the same thing.