Here's How To Order!

Television commercials have become something to look forward to, since the overall quality of content on TV, whether cable or broadcast, is getting more miserable by the day. It used to be, at least to my way of thinking, that there was a difference between the level of intelligence expressed in high-end television commercials during major productions and certain hours of the evening, and the plastic crap commercials that generally come with the late-night swill I watch. You used to be able to determine easily what time of day it was by the overall tenor of the commercials running at that time. Ditzy housewives who couldn’t make things clean was a big give-away during the daytimes, with automobiles, aluminum siding and beer taking up the evening hours.

The big-ticket items (except laundry facilities) were traditionally aired during the times the family breadwinner (Father) was planted in front of the dummy box after dinner, nicely dazed with a full belly and an empty head. Then it was time to trot out the song and dance approach to winkle him into buying a new family station wagon, complete with whiny jingle. This was back during a glassy-eyed, sedate era of American life when people bought cars because they were shiny and had fins. They were red, or blue, or brown, and a Ford, or Chevy, or Pontiac, because that’s what Dad’s Dad always bought. Mom and Dad voted one way or the other because that’s what their parents did. For a long time, television taught us that smart people bought cars and beer, and people who were less so bought detergents and diapers.

The coming of The Pill changed a lot of things, and this was one of them. Over an extended period of time, the agonizingly patronizing Lucy and Desi approach to selling things began wearing thin, and women’s organizations had begun spreading across the land. Angry women started getting righteously pissed off about virtually everything they could find that they figured infringed on what they interpreted as their new and expanding rights. The roles of women in television commercials and programming was one of the subjects that got direct attention because there was an influx at that time of so many bright, educated and influential women into the business of selling things. Not only did the ignorant, slavish housewife disappear from television commercials, the sinister second edge of the sword swept back the other way with a vengeance, a subject some women seem to know a great deal about. Mind that sharp edge.

Dad is now so incompetent he can barely dress himself. He can only just drive to his job and back each day, and it’s a wonder there hasn’t been an accident. There’s no way in hell he’ll be allowed to go shopping alone, because he’s a cheese-brained idiot with no self control and a credit card, and he’ll come back home with everything from a wedding cake to a lawn tractor stuffed into the family wagon. He must be trained how to do the dishes properly.

Toilet training is undertaken, with an emphasis toward leaving the lid down---and not pissing on it. Adult diapers are probably a good idea. The New American TV Husband/Dad is so lame he has to ask permission to leave the house---every time. So…why is he married to that nice-looking babe? What the hell happened to him after they got married that rendered him so short, fat and stupid? Obviously he couldn’t have been like that beforehand, not and wound up with her. Was there a bad industrial accident, and they had to jack up his hair and replace everything under it?

Okay, ladies, I get it. Enough, already. It used to be that we men were comfortable just being called swine, because it’s mostly true. But, if you recall your book-learnin’, ladies, pigs are also smart, and far more fastidious than they are ordinarily portrayed. My question is this: Why does there have to be someone in the barrel, someone to suffer the insults and humiliation only a user of the other company’s product could incur? Why can’t intelligent reasons be found for a purpose to buy something? I’ll tell you why---and this is why the realm of professional sales exists in the first place.

When left to their own devices, ordinary people are notoriously tight with a buck. Unless they’ve got some pandering clown dancing in front of them with promises of eternal shininess and extended warranties, they’re not likely to buy a damn thing. The clown is not only making the sale happen in the first place, he’s making the highest income of any professional in this country. We are paying the salesman that salary because the putz on television can’t figure out why his pants smell funny, so his wife teaches him how to sort the laundry before he starts washing. Sigh. Better go buy some detergent, buddy, and don’t forget the stinky dryer sheets and anti-cling spray. And don't forget you've got a house to paint this weekend.