But Wait There's More!

The TV assures me that the nice lady will sell me this wonderful new dooflicky that I simply must have because without it her actors are just clumsy oafs unable to get the hang of using ma’s old whatchamajigger that she used for years. What a nice lady! She spent gobs of money on a commercial in order to sell me her dooflicky that will cure my inability to move my work closer to the outlet. I’m stupid that way. (I always do my work 1 inch away from the cord’s longest reach, don’t you?) But wait there’s more!

The nice lady is going to sell me her dooflicky, a $60 value, for a mere $19.95 plus shipping and handling, which if I squint hard enough I can make out to be $7.95. So for $27.90 I can have this valuable dooflicky for less then half price. Yep, the nice lady is willing to loose money so that I can flip my pancake without tossing it into the garbage by mistake. But wait there’s more

For just eleven cents a day I can protect my baby with the Gerber Life Grow Up plan. Protect my baby from what? Does eleven cents a day buy my kid a guardian angel, or perhaps a secret service agent willing to take a childhood disease for the little tyke?

Derrick Jensen calls our culture “the culture of make believe”. He is right. We can pretend that paying an insurance company to give us five grand if little Sally runs into traffic should we get temporarily distracted by the tenth wedgie of the day, is protecting the kid. I know we so pretend because I never hear anyone exclaim at any of these commercials, “hey that’s pretty stupid”. More telling still is that Gerber Life has been running this ad for quite awhile. That means that people are buying it – literally buying it. Only a few nut cases like my self are offended by the ad. As I watch the pretty mother cuddle her beautiful baby and talk about "protection", I just have to wonder, does Gerber sell this “protection” in Baghdad? No? Imagine that! Baghdad babies need more protection than American babies right now. But wait there’s more…