What's Next - War Wars?

Caught an episode of the new PBS show Market Warriors this week. Four expert bargain hunters scoured a Philadelphia flea market for what they believed were treasures, bargained for the best price with the vendors, and sent the items off to be sold at an L.A. auction. The expert who earned the largest profit was declared the winner. Seems PBS has moved on from simply encouraging us to dig around in our attics to find items to cart to the Antiques Roadshow. I guess their patience with our celebrations when the lamp we bought at a yard sale for $2 turns out to be Tiffany has run out. Let the real pros show you obsessive bargain hunting it's done.

My first taste of Market Warriors, whose logo is four stars over the show title in a military typeface, came a few days after Sheila and I caught Craft Wars on TLC, hosted by Beverly Hills 90210 alum Tori Spelling. The order of the day was the construction of elaborate doghouses. Very enthusiastic contestants painted dog biscuits to use as borders and wove collars that became floor mats. One built a table using rolled up newspapers as the legs. The competition takes place in a studio festooned with craft supplies furnished by the fine folks at Michael's. And as in all reality shows, the contestants ran around frantically, took off-camera shots at each other's designs, and earnest claimed they weren't there to make friends.

OK, I didn't actually hear anyone say that, but it's coming. Book it.

But even though I try to limit invocations of Tori Spelling in my daily life, her new show caused me to wonder what we won't think of as a war. Our use of battlefield metaphors certainly isn't new. Work is a battlefield. Sports take place on numerous battlefields. Hell, if Pat Benatar is right, even love is a battlefield.

But is there anything left? Imagine the possibilities:

Chess Wars (ESPN): Teams of three loudly debate where to move their pieces (which light up), then slam the piece on the board (which lights up) and shout "Boo-Ya!" when they complete their move. Gary Glitter and "The Final Countdown" play in the background. Commentary is provided by UFC fighters, General Wesley Clark, and, since he needs the exposure, Donald Trump. Players high-five and yell "in your face!" when they capture an opponent's piece. Checkmate is celebrated by tossing opponents into a giant pool of Jell-O.

Reading Wars (PBS): Students in a sixth grade class compete to read the most books during the school year. Students are shown reading everywhere - in class, at home, in the car, on their bikes. Comprehension? We don't need no stinkin' comprehension. Competitors engage in some pretty gnarly behavior - books are hidden, secretly redacted (with on-camera tips from officials in the federal government), put on the roofs of cars, and tossed in nearby ravines. The winner gets a state of the art Kindle preloaded with the collected works of Stephen King - that'll keep 'em busy for a while.

Meditation Wars (Oxygen): Three Buddhist monks attempt to meditate for an entire day. But first, their robes are judged too simple and replaced with consultation from Stacy London and Clinton Kelly from TLC's What Not to Wear. In the challenge round, the monks race to achieve total tranquility in the shortest amount of time and come up with the most heartfelt mantra. The winner gets a chance to perform on American Idol, while the losers receive the collected works of Bill O'Reilly and Gilbert Gottfried on DVD.

Staring Up at the Cloud Wars (Sprout): We begin with three kids lying on a hill staring up at the sky. Elmo from Sesame Street will then burst on to the scene to pepper the kids with questions: How many clouds can you see? What do they look like? Where can Elmo learn more about clouds? After a speed round, in which contestants see and interpret as many clouds as they can in a minute, they'll be asked  to come up with the most imaginative cloud interpretations, with extra points awarded for references to great military battles and points deducted when Gandhi and Dr. King are invoked. The show will include interviews with Air Force cloud-seeding pilots who will discuss how to get your clouds to look just like General David Petraeus.

Maybe we see so much "war" because we've become so desensitized to it, as MSNBC's Rachel Maddow argues so eloquently in her superb book Drift. The draft is long gone, a professional army does the dirty work of our elected leaders, and the government has done a masterful job persuading the news media that embedding is the best they can do coverage-wise, even it produces the world's longest on-air game of "play with the siren." Where peace used to be our default, the state we hoped and wished for - and fought for - war is our constant these days. Besides - peace is for hippies.

So I guess we shouldn't look for a show called for "War Wars" in between episodes of Honey Boo-Boo and "My Lover Has The Most Facial Hair." It wouldn't last a month on the air; it's too real - and not real enough.

All the Noise! Noise! Noise!

So it seems the genteel clean starched underwear crowd at the All England Lawn and Tennis Club is miffed because some of the world's world class women's tennis players - Maria Sharapova, for example - excessively grunt and scream to punctuate their play.

The gall! But it actually comes from the complainers, not the players. The noise, which approaches 100 decibels at times, is a distraction, claim purists, so much so that officials have taken to nudging players to tone it down a bit. "We believe it is helpful to reduce the amount of grunting," said Club Chief Executive Ian Ritchie.

Would we even be having this discussion if the overly excitable players were male? Male athletes celebrate and gesticulate and pontificate about practically every move they make on the field or court or ice. It's one thing to mark a goal or touchdown with a well executed acknowledgement of the crowd or the theatrical skyward thrust of the fists. I've seen a nifty 15-yard on the knees goal celebration slide or two during recent soccer action on ESPN.

The accomplishment bar has been lowered considerably. If you don't trip over the baseline heading to the pitcher's mound, or collide with a teammate coming over the boards during a shift change in hockey, they throw you a parade. Why shouldn't female athletes be able to celebrate similarly?

Did someone mount an off-Broadway Victorian Era revival I wasn't aware of? Someone get Billie Jean King on the phone.

Are Termites Monsters?

Termites suck - or chew, more precisely. Forty-five types of subterranean, drywood, and dampwood termites do millions of dollars in damages annually to U.S. homes.

We found them in our house when we first moved in. It took months, and several different methods, to eradicate them. We're still reminded of their presence; once or twice a year, a representative from the company that finally solved the problem swings by and inspects our beams and joists to make sure the termites haven't mounted a comeback.

For the record, we also have quite a history with ants. I once witnessed them marching in - and out - by the hundreds in what looked like opposing ant conga lines. All that was missing, for you fans of old cartoons out there, were the giant elements of a picnic balanced on their nearly microscopic heads - watermelon, hot dogs, the basket itself. It took so many tries to get rid of them that we're on a first name basis with the exterminator who succeeded in dispatching them. A shout out to Dale!!

We'd like to reassure anyone who had planned to visit us that both the termites and the ants are gone.

So yes, unwanted insects are a nuisance, a money suck, a massive pain in the ass.

But are they monsters?

That's what the fine folks from Terminix would like us to think. Check out this clip from a recent Terminix ad:

After spraying and strategizing for months, you do start to wonder if this is actually what they look like. In another Terminix ad, an armada of giant flying bugs with giant mouths buzz a quiet community, and after crashing through and obliterating houses, turn into termites who in more subdued fashion slip through cracks in the outer walls of another row of homes.

But this is not a war, or a Transformers movie, it's a nuisance, a giant - excuse me, massive - pain in the ass. You will find peace and bug-free days, but not if you internalize every media message that, as my lovely and talented wife, Sheila, says, turns every inconvenience into a tragedy. Let's save our angst, our anger, our compassion for the real tragedies - like more children living in poverty.

The Mother Of All Mothers

When my mom would express her frustration at the disinclination of my brother and I to clean up after ourselves - and we invariably groused at her in response  - she would speculate that we'd be more receptive if she was more like Carol Brady - always positive, always dressed up, sometimes singing, but never outwardly frustrated with her expanded brood.

The Brady Bunch's creators have over the years weathered a lot of criticism - much of it from folks in my line of work - for how relentlessly chipper the characters were and how easily they solved an unrealistically simple and narrow range of problems, often in song. Still, Carol Brady didn't "helicopter," didn't live in her kids' back pockets, didn't practice "attachment parenting," which according to some experts is the new "common sense" child-rearing technique.

Moms like mine who emulated - if only to make a point - television counterparts like Carol Brady are invisible today. Instead, we've recently harvested a bumper crop of media overreaction to moms who make curious, unconventional, questionable, and downright damaging child-rearing decisions. Moreover, these are the only moms who get attention. Moms who adopt a more nurturing, "love you unconditionally and work my way out a job" approach, who let their kids make more of their own decisions as they mature, who don't treat every issue as though it was an ascent on Mt. Everest and every accomplishment or failure by their children as life-defining, -ending, or  -affirming, are not sufficiently compelling. Who do we see instead?

Way To Go, Zack Morris!

By the time they fill our classrooms, students have endured more than a decade in an educational system where learning has been reduced by testing advocates, eloquently labeled “Standardistas” by writer Susan Ohanian, to the mastery of purportedly essential skills. They have, for the most part, successfully muddled through an experience injected with intensity practically from the second they entered kindergarten. Ohanian suggests the media are a key purveyor of this intensity. Coverage of education, she argues, comprises “mostly refried press releases from the Fordham Foundation, the Heartland Institute, the Education Trust, and other public-school-bashing enterprises.” Reading or viewing a news story in which a reporter has gone “beyond the corporate chants and charts” about our crumbling public schools and the need for more stringent measures of teacher accountability is a rare occurrence.

Reporters are always on the lookout for “a pro national-testing piece” usually built on a comparison of how students in the U.S. perform compared to students in other countries, or a “feel good” story about a diligent, caring teacher who urges and cajoles students – who often come from poor neighborhoods – into generating improved test scores. But by and large, journalists are content to give voice in their coverage to members of what the late educational activist Gerald Bracey called the “schools are awful bloc,” made up of like-minded business leaders, think tanks, and educational reformers. These twin tendencies, contends Beatrice Motamedi, a former reporter who now teaches high school in San Francisco, stem from an editor's desire to attract readers: "finding one heroic, inspiring teacher who is beating the odds...makes for much better copy than the long, slow slog of teaching, grading, reteaching, coaching, and assessment that is the real work of teaching."

Get to Know Tim Tebow

Do me a favor: if you're planning to buy a Tim Tebow jersey now that he's pulled up stakes and moved to New York to play next season for the Jets, at least consider giving that money instead to the Human Rights Commission, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), or to Planned Parenthood.

Faced with having to refight the culture wars and defend basic human dignity, these groups need the money more than the Jets or Tebow do. Actually, Tebow is on the list of the narrow-minded people and entities they'll need your money to fight.

I'll leave it for ESPN analysts and high school football coaches to discuss how someone with such limited skills can be said to be ready to compete with Mark Sanchez for the starting job. Yet it should be noted that in the fevered rush to anoint Tebow the next Joe Namath (is this one ever off the mark), we've put aside for the moment criticism of his windmill throwing motion, the wobbly spirals often uncorked off the wrong foot, and the watered down Broncos playbook.

Our focus here is how the news media thus far have looked past Tebow's bigotry in favor of incessant prattle about his marketing prowess, set against a distinct "innocents abroad" backdrop (insert your favorite thinly veiled Sodom and Gomorrah reference here). Before you grab the remote and the chips this fall, consider: Tebow believes that homosexuality is wrong and can be cured. He believes women should be submissive. His father is involved with an organization that works in the Philippines to convert Catholics to its intolerant brand of evangelical Christianity. An organization whose followers believe that not being circumcised is a one-way ticket to hell.

Stop the Lin-Sanity (I couldn't resist...)

Now that the hype about Knicks guard and newly minted star Jeremy Lin has died down a notch or two, it's worth thinking about how fast it built up in the first place.

Sports journalists, never ones to shy away from star-making and burnishing, wrote and spoke about Lin's "meteoric rise" to fame based on his scintillating, if a little reckless and erratic, performance during a recent stretch of games. He continues to play pretty well, even as Knicks fans shift their gaze to the resignation of their coach, Mike D'Antoni, a departure reportedly hastened by a discontented Carmelo Anthony, arguably the team's best player.

Lin's ascendancy caused me to wonder if the media haven't changed the conditions for a "meteoric rise?" Can you "come out of nowhere" faster than you used to? Certainly, the fact that sports news is available every millisecond of every day has something to do with it, as does our ongoing appetite for celebrities. But it sure does seem that we've started to apply the "star" label on someone abruptly, almost without thinking about it.

This is not to say Lin's isn't a compelling story - he's the first Asian-American player in the NBA to rise to prominence. He seems like a nice guy. He went to Harvard. For all I know, he can sing and dance too. And he likely deserves - if anyone actually deserves - the notoriety and its attendant perks.

But fitting him for the fame suit just seemed to take even less time than usual. Of course, this may mean that "flash in the pan" status will be conferred just as quickly (this is where we're are supposed to say, "I hope he saves his money").

But thanks to the media, it all happened so fast.

Rush and the Bounty

Rush Limbaugh deserves every last bit of scorn we can muster for his sexist, misogynist, bullying, nasty, reprehensible comments about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University law student who testified before Congress about the positive impact of President Obama's directive which mandates that companies must offer birth control as part of health insurance coverage.

Heck, he deserves all of that for practically every minute he spends on the air - our air, for you fans of the Communications Act of 1934 out there. On his nationally syndicated radio show last week, Rush called Fluke a "whore" and a "prostitute" who we, the taxpayers, were in effect paying to have sex. He urged Fluke to post videos of her sexual activity so Rush could see what we paying for and shared his complete lack of knowledge about how birth control actually works. I urge anyone who reads this and works at a radio station that carries Rush's show to hector your boss until he or she decides to drop the show. The same plea goes out to employees of Rush's advertisers.

And Gregg Williams, defensive coordinator for the St. Louis Rams (my favorite team, I regret to say) deserves a significant suspension for putting bounties on the heads/bodies of opposing players while he was employed by the 2010 Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints. His defensive players received tidy cash bonuses for, among other things, knocking an opponent out of a game ($1,500) and for causing an opponent to be taken from the field on a cart ($1,000), according to Sports Illustrated's Peter King.

Adding insult to intentional injury, players would roll their rewards over to increase the pot. In the 2010 NFC Championship Game, Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma purportedly offered $10,000 to the teammate who could deliver the knockout blow to then Vikings quarterback and serial retiree Brett Favre.

What really deserves our collective disgust is the overheated (and often manufactured) reaction to these incidents. Conservative stalwarts like George Will and Sen. John McCain have lashed out at Rush. Former players have lined up on sports talk radio and ESPN to criticize the Williams System and disavow involvement in similar antics when they were in the league. 

But before your final gasp of disbelief, ask yourself: are you really shocked at these transgressions? Shocked that highly paid athletes unleashing their macho in an extremely violent game at the direction of win-at-all cost coaches put bounties on the heads of opponents? Shocked that the NFL hadn't "noticed" the problem, much like Major League Baseball's leaders didn't "notice" rampant steroid use while Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were dragging the sport out of the abyss caused by the 1994 players strike?

Does anyone else fantasize about Captain Louis Renault strolling on to ESPN's SportsCenter set to say "I'm shocked, shocked to find that lucrative headhunting and hateful misogynist misinformed ranting are going on in here"?

Cheer Up Sleepy Jean

Since they burst on to the cultural scene in 1966, the Monkees have weathered considerable flack for being little more than a studio concoction. Their most enduring pejorative nickname is the "pre-fab four," a nod to the fact they were our version of the Beatles.

But in the nearly four decades since, we've become quite inured to the "fab" part. Thanks to MTV and shows like American Idol, we expect - nay, we demand - packaging. We will accept no pre-fab artists. On a side note, we no longer feel deceived and rush to the Attorney General's office when performers lip sync.

But Davy Jones, the talented Monkees front man who died February 29 at age 66, was packaged when packaged wasn't cool - or overwrought; when back stage behavior, to use a term coined by the sociologist Erving Goffman, hadn't yet been transformed into another aspect of performance to be judged harshly by the likes of Simon Cowell. When you kept private the behaviors engaged in to improve your image (In my human communication class, I cite this line from Bruce Springsteen's hit Dancin' in the Dark: "I check my look in the mirror/want to change my clothes, my hair, my face").

But more important for our journey, Davy Jones rightfully achieved his fame for being good - not great, not outstanding, but good. Jones was good enough, which is just fine. Critics of pop star Katy Perry and of the prevalence of Auto-tune may disagree, but it seems less likely these days that a solid singer whose greatest gift is the ability to connect with an audience will carve out a career as lengthy as Jones'.

Such is life under the tyranny of perfection, artificially attained or otherwise.

Jones didn't have to sing Daydream Believer with a perfect vibrato and with mock earnestness that suggested he was trying to vanquish Paul McCartney. He didn't feel compelled to sing as though he was trying to find notes with a compass. There was little urgency, little tension, in episodes of The Monkees. No "inside baseball," no vying for the attention of the back of The Voice judges. The song was enough.

No, Jones, Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith (the one in the wool hat), and Peter Tork just came out and entertained - and really well, I might add (I'm a longtime fan). And unlike today's Idols, they made the most of the room to grow as musicians. Today's pre-fab stars have to hit the scene fully realized. Guess there's not a lot of room for the music industry equivalent of the late bloomer.

Let's all raise a glass to Davy Jones, a wonderful entertainer and a devoted husband and father - and a reminder of the time when pre-fab still had its innocence.

Can't We Just Eat?

I am among the world's least adventurous eaters (stay away from garlic, my friends). Cereal and a toasted english muffin for breakfast (Pop-Tarts are now out - thanks a lot, Doc!), a sandwich with some combination of deli meats for lunch, and something lovingly prepared by my amazing wife for dinner. I double-check and triple-check expiration dates (OK, quadruple check) and sniff every food for even the slightest trace of onions, hydrolyzed or otherwise. And I have only begun to fight the urge to resist leftovers.

So even though I'll never come close to test driving every restaurant genre listed in the latest Zagat's guide, I'd still like to share a few thoughts about the current state of eating in America, at least as it's described by the media.

Every food- or weight loss-related behavior we see and read about is intense. Food Network host Guy Fieri and his spiked hair attack food like it's freshly fallen game. Jamie Oliver cavorts around the world, a disheveled missionary saving us and our kids from our unhealthy diets. Author David Zinczenko demands that we "Eat This, Not That!" When she's not being paid by Big Pharma to hawk medicine for a belatedly announced case of diabetes, Paula Deen unashamedly continues to offer up artery-clogging treats. And we recently learned that Good Eats, hosted by the extremely intelligent Thomas Dolby lookalike Alton Brown, was leaving the air after 10 years. Where can we turn for 30-minute dissertations on crepes and fried chicken?

And if every child in America isn't dangerously obese or a foodie-in-training, they're just one waif-like model's image away from becoming anorexic or bulimic. Reporters routinely ignore the contextual factors that contribute to eating disorders, preferring instead to blame magazine covers. Teenaged girls, we are told, spend much of their time cruising so-called "pro-Anorexia" websites, looking for advice on how to become super thin.

Can't we just eat? Do we have to sit in the chef's lap as a meal is prepared? Do we have to Yelp about an establishment's tap water? And isn't it possible to lose weight in a non-bootcamp setting, or without spiraling through a binge-purge cycle?

My wife's apple pie is the single greatest food product ever to come out of an oven. I ask for it instead of a cake for my birthday. I want to be buried with one - that is, if I change my mind on cremation. Yet while I think about it often - especially the sweet velvety crumb topping - it doesn't occupy every brain cell not devoted to baseball and West Wing and Star Trek reruns.

When I find myself in times of cooking zeal, I turn to Jacques Pepin, one of the few who still actually teach you how to cook. Yet even Jacques popped up a year or two back on an episode on cooking's grudge match, Top Chef.

But I'm a sometimes reasonable person, so I propose a compromise: I'll be OK with the six-burner Viking stoves and the Barefoot Contessa catering for all of eastern Long Island, but only if someone puts my show, tentatively titled Food For Chickens, on the air. It would be aimed at folks who just want to enjoy their food, and who don't want to have to replay the most famous scene from When Harry Met Sally to show their appreciation.

Maybe I can persuade Jacques Pepin to be the host.

Where Is The Outrage?

So apparently the entire nation was up in arms (or legs) last fall because the producers of ABC’s hit show Dancin’ With the Stars selected Chaz Bono, the transgendered son of legendary 60s and 70s singing stars Sonny and Cher, to compete as part of its 13^th season. Including Bono in the cast caused a “virtual firestorm” of controversy, according to ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos.

No less an authority on morals than One Million Moms, a “project” of the ultraconservative – and ultra narrow-minded – American Family Association, called for a national boycott of the show until Bono was removed from the cast. The project’s director, Monica Cole, told ABC News that seeing Bono and her partner on television would undoubtedly be “very confusing for children” who apparently we don’t trust to know love when they see it.

The criticism energized Bono; it “made me realize I’m really glad I’m doing this because America needs to see this,” he told an interviewer last year.

I support and agreed with Bono – America did need to see him, get over it, and accept him, but perhaps more important, the flap highlighted how a few bigoted people with an ability to manufacture miniscule pockets of outrage can capture the attention of a news media always on the outlook for the next conflict, ersatz or otherwise.

Would James Taylor Make It on "The Voice"?

A lot of talented people have taken the first packaged steps to stardom on shows like the FOX hit American Idol and NBC's The Voice. Clay Aiken, Kelly Clarkson, and Katherine McPhee, who will star in the upcoming NBC show Smash, spring to mind. Perhaps The Voice's season one winner Javier Colon will follow in their footsteps.

While I'm not an avid viewer of these shows, I've been thinking about what they tell us about the path to fame, about talent and how it's judged, and what we like in our performers.

The Ted Mack Amateur Hour was still on when I was a kid. Looking now at the performances, I was struck by how, well, amateur, the performers were: ventriloquist acts, a woman playing the xylophone, spoon players, plate spinners, and the requisite number of singers. Viewers were encouraged to call in or drop a line to indicate which performers they liked. OK, that hasn't changed, except we now vote online. And thanks to America's Got Talent, we still see tumblers and folks who create intricate silhouettes do their thing.

But today's shows are far more urgent, their judges far more judgmental than in the days of Ted Mack, or Star Search for that matter. And the performers are all so good - already. Amateurism was celebrated on the Amateur Hour. Not so today; it's comedy fodder for their early rounds of Idol. And not only do you have to be already accomplished, you have to gush incessantly about your passion for performing and dress the part. You have to "want it."

Which brings us, finally, to James Taylor. Taylor is quite famous - and quite successful. He's sold millions of records, CDs, and downloads, and is recognized - justly, I think - as one of our most accomplished songwriters. And the narrative of his journey to fame has all the Behind the Music elements we require: long nights plying his trade at the Troubadour in LA, well chronicled struggles with drugs and mental illness, a failed marriage to another famous person, getting clean, and a successful second act.

When Did Yoga Start Causing Injuries?

So let me get this straight: yoga now has a "bad boy?" Yoga features "competitive trash talk?" Yoga needs a "road warrior" to preach its many benefits? This is yoga we're talking about - meditative poses like downward facing dog, saying "namaste" to our mat neighbor. We now need to be warned about the injuries that might result from undertaking yoga too strenuously, too sweatily? You can get a drink after performing the lotus position during Happy Hour Yoga in the Twin Cities?

What about the folks who just want 20 minutes to sit on their mats, breathe, and be calm? Like dedicated but subdued sports fans, they have been banished to the margins of the media's discourse on exercise. 

It seems we've taken a peaceful activity like yoga and turned it into a multimedia, multiplatform business run by zealous folks like John Friend, a multitasking dynamo and founder of Ansuara, a form of yoga that's "nothing like the more rigid schools that demand students repeat the same poses in the same way at every single class." Friend claims his spin on yoga is "accessible. Easily applicable. And yet it has depth and sophistication." 

Friend's response to all that rigidity sounds comforting, even empowering; the latter is the point of pretty much every activity we undertake in our cost-benefit happy society. "Failing to execute a post meant nothing more than that you might succeed next time," wrote Mimi Swartz of The New York Times Magazine. Friend quietly encourages to "contain divinity within ourselves," Swartz explained, and "express our inner goodness to fulfill our obligation to better our world."

Deadly, But Made to Seem Desirable

They’re a Sunday School standard: The Seven Deadly Sins. Behaviors in which we’re never supposed to engage. Attributes we’re never supposed to exhibit. Big-time no-nos. Way beyond the humble faux pas.

But is it possible the mass media today tell us the Sins are actually desirable behavioral traits? Put another way, what do the media ask us, through the narratives they present, to believe about the Sins? I’m not a fan of “hypodermic” models of media effects, which suggest a numbed audience instantly impacted by the onslaught of information it receives. Still, the media can suggest what we should be thinking about. By paying a lot of attention to a person, place, or event, the media persuade us that they are, well, worth paying attention to.

            

So after resisting the temptation to put actor Charlie “Winning” Sheen at the top of each list, I compiled a few examples that support my point. Here goes (the sins are listed in alphabetical order):

Envy:  This is right in the media’s wheelhouse. To survive, they must sell audience to advertisers; we have to be made to want the goods and the lifestyle they sell. In this world, you can’t be happy with who you are. It’s not a matter “of wanting what you’ve got,” to quote singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow in Soak Up The Sun. A constant state of envy theoretically keeps you coming back for more goods. It’s kind of like a self-help expert who tells you strike out on your own – seize the day, find your spirit, unleash your personal power – but demands that in doing so you return from time to time for advice. So we end up arranging the most outlandish wedding or making over our home to include granite counter tops, a dual vanity, and enough distance between we and our neighbors, in a house so large and garish it screws up property values. In preparation for the wedding all time, most women, suggest the media, turn into fire-breathing, overly pampered whiners who spend most of their time barking orders and spewing bleeped obscenities at the bridal party – all so they can have two-story terrarium centerpieces, a horse-drawn carriage to bring them to the church, and fireworks behind the altar designed to ignite when “I dos” are exchanged. Our desire to be envied purportedly extends to education, where we’re on our kids to attend the right schools as soon as they outgrow the bassinet. Parents frantically seek kindergarten slots given out with an eyedropper, as they teach their kids to begin their legacies with classroom and on-field/on-court excellence.

In Defense of Santa

I didn’t think it was possible for Christmas-themed television commercials to get any more aggressive. I thought the ponytailed woman in the Target ads, who gleefully shouts to unseen neighbors as she reads a store sale circular on her front porch, and trains for holiday shopping – and present wrapping – with the dedication of an Olympic athlete, was as zealous as it got.  

And I remain hopeful that society will overcome the breathless news coverage of Black Friday, which this year predictably highlighted the handful of dysfunctional folks who took matters of consumer justice into their own hands while the rest of us held open doors and places in line or, as in the case of our local big box store, stayed home, having stashed their wallets until the economy improves.

Then Best Buy decided to go after Santa Claus.

The Christmas ads created for the electronics store chain take media holiday zealotry in a troubling new direction. In one, a salesperson punctuates an assurance that the store will match a competitor’s price with “look out, Santa.” The shopper’s happiness in getting a good price turns to competitive fervor: “Oh, yeah,” she says with a level of fierceness that would startle Tyra Banks.

We next see Santa about to put a bottle of cologne in the stocking of the shopper’s husband. The woman turns on the lights. “Daddy don’t want no cologne,” she says, a massive HDTV sitting on a table to her left. “Wow,” Santa says as a lion attacks a zebra in full flat-screen splendor. “Yeah – wow,” the woman proudly retorts. “Look at that.” Cologne still in hand, Santa recoils slightly, although it’s not clear whether it’s a reaction to the Darwinian violence unfolding in front of him, or because he senses that the creators of the Christmas play may want to “go in another direction.”

In another spot, a shopper marvels at how many gifts Best Buy has available for less than $100. “Guess Santa better watch out, huh?” suggests a chipper employee. The woman, holding a digital camera in one hand and an e-reader in the other, fires a knowing “Santa is toast” nod.

Next we see Santa attempting to put a toy truck into a stocking already bulging with snazzier goodies. The woman we saw moments earlier waits for him. She leans against a jam in the entryway, holding a mug of coffee.

“Awww…guess I didn’t leave any room for you,” she says with high-pitched arrogance, sweep-pointing at the largesse under her family’s tree.

“Awkward,” she adds in a slightly higher voice with a mocking pout.

Santa sniffs and nods slightly, his leg having just been swept by the bully in The Karate Kid.

“Maybe you could fill his,” the triumphant woman suggests. She points downward, where Ralph, a small dog dressed as a reindeer, waits, a stocking in his mouth. She gestures to Santa with her mug and whispers “good night” before heading off to bed.  The dog’s off-camera bark startles Santa as “Game On, Santa” appears onscreen.

A third ad ends with yet another victorious shopper seated in her living room, menacingly drinking the glass of milk meant for Santa. The accompanying cookies sit untouched nearby, with a kid-made “For Santa” sign reminding us of their intended recipient. They’ll be devoured next.

Is this what Christmas has come to? Gloating over vanquishing Santa? Before you feign surprise or indignation, consider that we’ve recently taken to celebrating breathing and stringing together consecutive steps, so in need of calibration is our national “hero” meter.