Random Thoughts

Feb. 26, 2003

We‘re Living In A Golden Age

These days, I never answer the phone at dinner time, or for hours thereafter. I‘m sure you already know why: nine times out of ten, the caller is a telemarketer.
Why is it that the U.S. government can manage to send 200,000 soldiers to the Gulf of Arabia, or 50,000 to Afghanistan, yet is unable to rid us of the plague coming through our telephone receivers? The feds are preparing a new “do-not-call list“ that‘s supposed to lay the hammer down on telemarketers, but I suspect it will be as pansy as all of the other measures taken to stop these pests. Every time the government acts to rid us of telemarketers, we seem to end up with even more telemarketers.
It seems impossible that people would have stood for this outrage prior to the 1970s. But since then, our seduction by consumerism has led us to a time where so many values have been replaced by marketing, shopping and acquisition. We’ve grown numb to the manipulation, like the dreaming stiffs supplying their lifeforce to the machines in “The Matrix.” We’ve entered the Golden Age of Crapola.
Only in the Golden Age of Crapola would telemarketers be allowed to spoil every night of the week, and to prey upon the elderly, many of whom get more than 20 calls per day as part of a multi-billion-dollar elderfraud industry. Talk about Axis of Evil -- why isn‘t anyone sending troops after these guys?
Hey, did you know they‘re calling on Sunday morning now too?
Golden Age of Crapola.
For more proof, one need only look at the state of television, which is the mirror of our nation‘s soul.
In some ways, the new reality TV shows are an improvement. How many dramas about cops, lawyers and doctors can you watch before turning into a block of petrified wood, after all?
Funny yet horrifying at the same time are the reality shows like “Joe Millionaire“ or “The Bachelorette,“ both of which demonstrate that we really are descended from apes, as Darwin claimed. And that marriage is headed for the cheap-o clearance racks as an institution.
The level of sincerity in these shows is about as fleeting as a snowflake in the Hiroshima bomb blast. Love is either for sale or up for auction to the best looking person. Or it’s just a cheap plaything, like the upcoming show where viewers will match up marriage partners with their votes.
Last week, “Joe Millionaire“ Evan Marriott revealed to his chosen sweetheart that he really wasn‘t a spoiled yuppie heir worth $50 million -- he is in fact, a construction worker who makes $19,000 a year. You could see the glimmer of those lost dollar bills dying in his lady love‘s eyes as she choked out the words that it didn‘t matter -- sentiments as phony as one of those $3 Clinton bills they sold at gun shows in the ‘90s. Even if it “didn‘t matter,“ she should have slapped his face for being a pathological liar. The gotcha moment was the butler showing up with a check for $1 million to reward the immortal lovers for their devotion to greed. Good luck on your marriage to that guy, lady.
TV also tells us that music is hip-deep in the Age of Crapola with shows such as “American Idol,“ where the emphasis is on one‘s ability to mimic Mariah Carey or Justin Timberlake. The content of the songs is irrelevant -- the point for the hundreds of young contestants is to look good and pretend to be sincere.
Maybe that‘s why Rolling Stone magazine has endless reports that the music industry is going down like the Titanic. Its own covers tell the tale: vapid pop stars in their underwear who have nothing to say and not an original idea in their heads. That‘s why Eminem is so popular -- he actually says something with his music and puts forceful ideas into the listener‘s head, even if you don‘t agree with him.
The other night, Jay Leno joked that with shows such as “Joe Millionaire,“ “American Idol“ and “The Bachelorette,“ it‘s no wonder the rest of the world hates us. Truer words were never spoken, because these shows announce to the world that we have no soul. Our TV shows are like the Jewish gollum -- a creature that looks like a human being, but has no heart and nothing going on inside. Our shows say that we don‘t know how to be sincere, that everything is artificial and a set-up for a laugh track or the cynical manipulations of a bimbo or a stud.
Speaking of telemarketers, has anyone else found those Verizon ads to be torture almost beyond endurance? They feature the Dork family in their kitchen, playing with their TV robot thingie, and the wife is actually calling a telemarketer at Verizon to chat up how groovy it would be to have their new long distance telephone service. The family, combined, doesn‘t look like they have the intelligence of a single parakeet.
Is that us? Is that really the American family in a crazy new world turned upside down, where telemarketers are our buddies, and family fun boils down to playing with ghastly expensive gadgets? If so, then we need to go camping in the Yukon or the Everglades for six months to get our heads back together instead of just pretending to have an experience with “Survivor.“

Strange Omens

Newspapers in the Arab world are claiming that disasters in America such as the crash of the Columbia and the horrific nightclub fires are omens that our country is stepping into a firestorm if it goes to war with Iraq.
They note that the Colombia went down over Texas, the president’s home state. And that the Israeli astronaut -- who carried out a raid against Iraq in 1981 -- died as the ship broke up passing over the small town of Palestine, Texas. To Muslim religious fanatics, the deaths of scores of young Americans in the nightclub fires represent Allah’s wrath.
In a recent column by Ariana Huffington, she noted that in ancient times, no Persian king would dream of launching a war if such omens appeared. If you tripped on your robe on the way up the palace stairs, the invasion of Babylon was kaput.
It’s creepy stuff, and if your god happens to support the incineration of innocent, fun-loving people out having a good time, then to hell with him and you too.
But those terrible fires in our own land should also give us pause to consider what our soldiers will be asked to do overseas. How many hundreds of similar fires will there be, burning the civilians of Iraq alive when we unleash Operation Shock and Awe, with 3,000 bombs and cruise missiles raining down on them in the first 48 hours? The Pentagon claims it wants to recreate the London Blitz to pound Iraq into instant submission; but that evil incident in history was a war against civilians by the German Luftwaffe.
Unlike the fires in Chicago and Rhode Island, there won’t be any ambulances or burn units rushing to aid the innocent civilians of Iraq, who we claim to want to liberate. Will we be helping them by burning their children alive?
At the very least, our military should be considering every option to save lives in Iraq, if and when we ignite the war.