How are you dealing with holiday expectations? Have you been saving up for a new DVD player or a cashmere sweater?
Loser. All the successful kids have saved up for a Lexus or two. Apparently they have so much money laying around that their spouse doesn't even notice the $30K or $40K missing from checking (surely, they wouldn't do something as plebian as finance).
Obviously, I am not the target audience. In fact, the target audience likely scores a holiday bonus larger than my annual income … or, perhaps doesn’t work at all.
The target audience “knows”:
- A certain amount of money (and the right doctors) can buy happiness
- Love is properly displayed via indulgent, absurdly expensive gifts
- It’s essential to have the newest everything
- When people see “me” in a Lexus, they’ll envy my accomplishment
- My spouse will always love me if we just have enough stuff…
The losers driving the same old Camry to the after-holiday sales “know”:
- Our credit card balances are too high to even “price” happiness
- Love is properly displayed via indulgent, absurdly caloric holiday meals
- A car –any car—is infinitely more convenient than the bus
- “I’m” awfully busy talking on my cell phone, programming the XM radio and checking my makeup – no time or interest in other cars
- The more stuff you own; the more it owns you
In another season of holiday layoffs, in a country with a vast rich-poor gap, at a time of year when most people are scraping together what they can to deliver a happy holiday to everyone on their lists…
Well, let’s just say even soap operas don’t cast characters as haughty or story lines as arrogant as these Lexus commercials.
Meanwhile, CBS and NBC rejected the God is Still Speaking advertisement produced by the United Church of Christ, on the grounds that the ad is too "controversial". The ad in question shows gruff "bouncers" working the line in front of a church, picking who can and can't come in. Fade to second scene, which shows smiling children, minorities, an elderly couple, and (gasp) two women standing next to each other, one with her hand on the other's shoulder. No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here, the narrator intones.
The stations have rejected the value or “not being bigoted” in favor of the value of copious consumption in a holiday season that is supposed to be about giving … and, I don’t think luxury cars are quite what was intended…
This is Bush’s world – we are only consumers in it.
Oh, and you want to dress up the Camry for the holiday, here's where you buy those monster bows.
AWESOME! nothing like getting a payment book for the Holidays!
Posted by: stupidtom | December 04, 2004 at 01:10 PM