Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Aug 21, 2006

Gag me with a spoon

Filed in Blog

What is wrong with this picture?

Commercial. A woman is at the playground with her kid. Kid’s about to take her turn on the slide. Bully-mother shoves her out of the way and has her kid take the turn instead. Mother #1 wimpily protests, “But it was our turn!” Bully-mother gloats, “Well it’s our turn now.”

So, Mother #1 scoops up her kid and rushes…to the Hummer dealership. She buys a Hummer. Apparently this is the solution to playground mother-ego-games.

What the…?

Now, if this were an ad for an assertiveness class, I’d understand it. But a society that relies on things to bolster confidence and assertiveness, especially big, ridiculous, stupid things–that is something that creeps me out in a big way. I sat and gawked at that commercial. Actually, it made me want to throw up.

The product–the Hummer–should never have been on the road at all. What the heck are we driving gas-guzzlers like this for when we’re at war over oil? O ye who whineth over the cost of gasoline, did it occur to you to lobby for greener vehicles that get more than 10 mph? What, you think that we won’t ever run out of oil? Try looking forward a bit and see the legacy we’re leaving our children.

And quite aside from that, what kind of message are we sending here? Feel slighted? Buy something. Want to be confident? Buy a bigger something to compensate. Buy things to fill the gaps in your personality, o empty people of the States. I’ve lived in the USA for nine years now, and every so often this type of blatant turning of our emotions and insecurities into things-that-can-be-fixed-with-money catches me off guard. This one, indeed, was so incredibly stupid that it left a bad taste in my mouth.

It’s a good job it’s a Hummer, which costs more than I need to make ends meet for a year; they’ll never know they lost a customer, because I would not touch a company that sells like this. It appals me that not only did they think they could make money with that ad, that they probably will. I have only one thing to say to the character in the ad. Honey, if you’re so shallow that you need to buy a new Hummer to stand up to a bully…spend your money on a shrink. You’ll feel better, and you’ll have enough change left to buy a Smart Car.