(Vanity) A Generation of Children, or, President <strike>Hoover</strike> Electrolux

grey_whiskers ^ | 05-17-2009 | grey_whiskers

[grey_whiskers]

There has been a particularly annoying advertisement running on the radio in Minneapolis over the last couple of weeks. As messages go, it is pretty good, since it is inspiring me to let all of you know about it...but as an advertisement, it fails, since it sends a stronger message about our culture than it does about the company (I can't even remember the name of the product for sure). Let's walk through the ad and see what we can find.

The commercial appears to be set in a Movie Theater. It begins with a dialogue between a cheerful young female, and an older male:

"Welcome to Overpriced Cinemas. How may I help you?"

"Four tickets, please."

"That'll be forty dollars."

"Forty dollars!!" (mumbling complaints in undertone.)

"Thank you. Concessions are on your left."

Footsteps, then a new voice enters the conversation, that of a young man:

"I want a popcorn and a large pop. No, I said a *large* popcorn."

And a young female voice chimes in:

"Can I have a hot dog?"

To which the older male replies:

"Honey, the hot dogs are seven dollars..."

And he is cut off by the young female voice shouting in a sudden, loud, I'm-making-a-scene-on-purpose voice:

"I WANNA HOT DOG!!!"

And the voice of the vendor behind the counter says:

"Thirty-five dollars, please."

The adult male voice then sighs out:

"Here we go again..."

The commercial then segues into how everything costs so much and how this company give you more for less, or some such spiel.

The advertisement is interesting from a sociological point of view, since one of the first techniques taught in advertising is to present things in terms familiar to your audience. And this implies several things. First, the target market is obviously that of a middle-aged father, used to being being overcharged to satisfy his children's whims, but unable to do anything about it.

But there is a deeper significance to this. When the father does remonstrate against the high prices, he is not persuaded, nor reasoned with. The little girl goes right for the jugular. "I WANNA HOT DOG!!!". For you see, in our society, it is unthinkable for a parent to discipline his or her children in public: someone might see, and call Social Services. And both the parent and child know this. So all the child has to do is make a scene, because after all, "The more you know..." and "It's all for the children." You may argue that I'm exaggerating here. Sure, but the *possibility* is in the back of many people's minds. When I was a child, nobody would side with a disruptive child in public over the parents; in many places, the neighbors or bystanders would judge the parent for FAILING to discipline the child. How did we get here in one short generation?

There are a couple of reasons, I think. First, let it be noticed that the country has gone well downhill in many ways over the past 40-50 years. Remember that within living memory, even prime time network TV shows would not show even a married couple in bed together, unless one of them had their feet on the floor. Divorce was a whispered scandal; crime rates were low -- I can recall walking unescorted at the age of 8 over a mile from home, in a major urban area, to the drugstore, or bicylcling, unattended, for hours at a time; and nobody thought anything of it. Free love wasn't the norm: no hookups, no sexting, no prime-time ads for herpes medications. Don't try the bullshit about "Borking" me and segregated lunch counters: these items are MEMORIES, of values the entire country shared, and most people secretly wish we could get back there.

So again, how did we get away from it? I think the answer goes back to the 1960's, when the counterculture came into being. Not only was there a systemic campaign to undermine the moral values common to the country, but there was a systemic effort to implant into positions of power, people who did not *want* those values for themselves, or saw in the breakup of those values, an excellent opportunity to increase the need for government. Stable two-parent families don't really need bureaucracies, so they must be eliminated. (Paging Daniel Patrick Moynihan!)

So we now have a situation where many of the leaders mouth our values, but when push comes to shove, they don't really support them. In fact, one could argue that the politicians lie to get power, and then, instead of reflecting the will of the people, and passing laws which reflect the majority will, the politicians see it as their noble socialist duty to "stand up" for the minorities, the downtrodden, the oppressed. But the problem is, many of the "minorities" are not minorities because they are repressed; they are minorities because they are moonbats. (Cue to the the opening scene of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "Aha! Now we see the violence inherent in the system. Help! Help! I'm being repressed!") And so the will of the politicians -- conditioned to listen to the shrillest of the voices of their constituents -- ignores the plain will of the people and instead *suppresses* it.

Yes, this is exactly like the commercial. When the father says, "Honey, those hot dogs are seven dollars..." the child, sensing that they are not going to get their way, shouts "I WANNA HOT DOG!"

Very much like the bailout and stimulus crowd today, who substitute their wants in place of everyone else's needs. ("From each according to his means, ..." -- is it any wonder people accuse Obama of being a socialist or worse?)

And this brings us to the last part of the title, President Hoover. Hoover was President when the economy started to go downhill, but got all the blame, despite the fact that it was the Socialist policies of Comrade Roosevelt which prolonged the Depression for years. (Not to mention his Unconstitutional laying of the foundations for the nanny state, Social[ist] Security.) Today, President Bush was in office during the beginnings of what was then merely a slow-burning recession, based on unsustainable debt levels in a number of markets; he may play Hoover to the current occupant of the White House, President Electrolux, who has promised to suck all the wealth out of the wallets of "The Wealthiest Americans" (read: most productive wage earners and wealth-creators), to fulfill his redistributionist wet dreams. And all driven by the insistent cries of, "I WANNA HOT DOG!": an entire generation of children.

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl