Marketplace produced by Public Radio International.
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What does 40 million buy ya’?(Whitewater investigation)
How does it make you feel to know Kenneth Starr has spent over 40 million tax-payer dollars just to find out people lie about their sex lives? Anybody who has been through puberty or High School knows you’ve lied or been lied to, about sex. Typical of the government they paid 40 million dollars for information anybody else could get for free.
If we ever do find out if there was an improper or proper sexual relationship between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky it will probably cost millions more dollars and we’ll know nothing more about the Whitewater land-deal, which is what this whole thing is supposed to be about anyway.
Of course, the Independent Council Office claims knowing more about the President’s sex life will help us sort out Whitewater, because it goes to the issue of his honesty. If it’s honesty that’s the issue it would be easier for Kenneth Starr to investigate Clinton’s golf game. Does the President take gimme putts? Does he in anyway solicit gimme putts or pressure fellow players to look at his 25-foot putt and say "That’s good by me. Pick it up Bill." Because I can tell you this, I have seen the President’s swing and there is no way he can break 80 under the strict rules of golf, as he claims. If Kenneth Starr can threaten the President’s playing partners with jail time we might figure out this whole Whitewater thing.
Because if we don’t the economy will never grow, the jobless and crime rates will never fall, the budget will never balance and... well, excuse me, all those things actually have happened without knowing whether the President cheats at golf or dropped his pants in front of Paula Jones or in High School rigged the spin the bottle game so it would always point at him.
But if we give Kenneth Starr enough money, one day he will find the answers and armed with this knowledge we’ll really get this country going again. We might even land an un-manned space probe on Mars. Excuse me, we did that already. But freed up from this haunting lack of facts concerning the President’s sex life we might one day build a car that doesn’t pollute the very air we breathe. Just a second, I think GM already did that. Let me get back to you later on all the good things that will happen when we know the facts about the President’s sex life.
What’s my point? The President’s sex life has nothing to do with the price of coffee. Iran-Contra took place right down where they grow the stuff so it did have something to do with the price of coffee and thus warranted an investigation. In short, a President should never mess with the price of coffee and if he doesn’t, don’t mess with him.
If you want to get a baby something, buy stock in a baby company
My wife and I had a our first baby three months ago and since then life has been a stream of wonderful revelations. Among our amazing discoveries— that a plastic trash can full of dirty diapers can contain the smell of those diapers... unless you open the lid, that a thing as small as a baby's gastro-intestinal system can make such a big noise and how utterly charming screaming, drooling and belching can be.
But what's surprised us most is how generous people have been. We have received all kinds of clothes, stuffed animals and books from friends and family but I think the best gift you can give a newborn, is stock in a company that makes baby stuff. What a business this baby business! First, people will always give baby clothes to their friends because this miniature baby stuff is so cute. And second, babies out grow their clothes... overnight. Which means, there's lots of clothes to buy every baby every week.
Plus, first time parents are so anxious and nervous, if the tag says a sleeper is for infants four-to-six months old, there is no way my three month old daughter is wearing it because she could inhale the extra material. In fact, new parents will discover there is an endless sea of baby products out there and just because a product exists, paranoid parents have to have it. I mean, how could you safely raise a baby without a handi-wipe warmer, a brilliant product which electronically heats baby-wipes up to body temperature? God forbid, an infant who will happily sit for hours in fecal stew, ever feel the cold caress of a room temperature pre-moistened toilette. It makes you wonder how the pioneers ever got even one kid through puberty.
Unlike the Moms and Dads of yesteryear, today's parents, the pioneers of the digital frontier, are kid-gadget crazy. We will spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on products that may help our child get one more hour of sleep per year. But, if instead of giving a child this stuff you give your child stock in the company that makes that stuff, they may lose an hour of sleep but gain ahead-start on the future. A future, perhaps, filled with torment and anxiety from being cleaned with cold baby wipes but enough financial security to pay for therapy. In fact, if a baby owns stock in a diaper service company, every time that baby dirties a diaper, they are investing in their own future.
I don’t want to be an Irish Fisherman
What I am about to say may send shock waves through the economic community— even though the health of the economy depends on a robust holiday shopping season, I don’t want any Christmas presents from my Mom. I love my Mom... but the problem is for the past eight years she has given me an off-white cable knit sweater. And I just don’t have the heart to tell her I never wear even one, let alone eight off-white cable knit sweaters. They just end up at Goodwill. Either my Mom can’t remember me rolling my eyes after I opened the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth cable knit sweaters or for some reason my Mom thinks I have outfit a crew of Irish fishermen. Whatever the case, the odds are, again this year, I will get yet another off-white cable knit sweater.
The most frustrating part of the gift-giving season is every year my Mom asks me want I want for Christmas, every year I say "Go to the Gap because I can return whatever you get," and every year, for the past eight, she get’s a cable knit sweater from some place with a lousy return policy, located somewhere I am never going to be.
My Dad on the other hand, for spiritual reasons, wants to have a Christmas without presents and focus on the joy of family and togetherness. For financial reasons, I’d like to take him up on it because the problem with getting a gift for my parents is that they are now officially old and can’t learn how to use anything invented since color T.V. Whatever we get them ends up in the basement or... Goodwill.
We gave my parents a VCR ten years ago and it was absolute hell trying to teach them to use the damn thing. When I told my Dad, to play the VCR he had to leave the T.V. on channel three, he said, "Three is the weather channel. We don’t watch three. We watch two, four and five."
I so look forward to the day when I can throw some wrapping paper and a few empty boxes around the living room and trick my Mom into thinking that we’ve already opened our presents. She’ll ask if I like what she got me and I’ll say "I like the shirt you gave me so much I’m wearing it already."
But, actually the market analysts don’t have a lot to fear from me this year— using some form of insane logic my brothers and I have voluntarily jumped, once more, into gift giving hell. Even though it took months to explain the VCR to my Dad and ten years later my Mom still can’t program it, this year we are giving my parents their first... computer. And therefore, for inexplicable reasons, the economy will continue to grow.
Joe Camel is sent out to pasture
The people who used Joe Camel to market cigarettes to kids have decided to retire their cartoon dromedary. Instead, in the future, they will give away free Beanie Babies with every carton of cigarettes purchased and two Beanie Babies to every new smoker under ten. Just kidding. I made that up. Beanie Babies are so popular with kids right now, no tobacco company could come up with enough of then to use in a giveaway program.
Actually, it was a moral awakening that ended the commercial life of Joe Camel. During the recent negotiations over the tobacco settlement, company executives were shown how badly cigarettes yellowed the baby teeth of the children Joe Camel appealed to and it made them sick. I made that up, too. Yellowed baby teeth didn’t have anything to do with their decision to stop using Joe Camel. Only threatened legal action, or coming up with a better marketing gimmick like a baby-crib mobile made out of cigars, could motivate a tobacco company to drop a successful marketing tool like Joe Camel.
Anti-smoking groups thought the strong appeal cartoon characters have for children was a prime component of Joe Camel’s success and why there was so much resistance to giving him up but, there may be more to it than that. The guy who played the Marlboro Man in print ads and on T.V. was a heavy smoker and ended up with lung cancer, which understandably, is not a good image builder for a tobacco company. So they figured a fictional, cartoon-character like Joe Camel, was a sure way to avoid the embarrassing situation of having your spokesman die from using your product. Alright, maybe I made that up too. I don’t know anything about Joe Camel except that his comforting grin will no longer be looking down at us from billboards. And it won’t be long before the same is true for the Marlboro Man. Let’s hope drug dealers don’t rush to fill the void with an animated elephant named Howie Heroin.
Computer advice and the Donner Party
Throughout history major disasters could have been avoided if people had just been honest and said "I can’t help you" when asked for directions. That’s how the Donner Party got into trouble. The Donner Party stopped and asked an old guy in Kansas or Missouri how to get to California and he said, "When you get to that big tree... just keep going... and you’ll get to California and have a cup of joe and say ‘Hi’ to my mother." The Donner party gets a mile away before the old guy realizes he meant to say, "You’ll get stuck in the snow and have to eat one another." The poor Donner Party gets bad directions from one old coot and they ending up having to barbecue the family instead of having a family barbecue.
What’s my point? One day last week, I crashed my computer after getting nothing but bad advice. I was on the phone, following the supposed expert’s advice and a window came up that said "STOP NOW or lose all your data and your mind... we’re not kidding." And under that warning there were three option boxes. The first said , "Proceed Anyway you big idiot", the second option said "SHUT DOWN computer and take a nap" and a third option said "Buy a typewriter." And the expert on the phone says, "‘Hit Proceed anyway you big idiot.’ I know a short cut."
So like an idiot, I hit "Proceed Anyway" and the screen flashes the words "Donner Party" and starts to eat itself and then the expert says, "Well, then I guess I don’t know how to fix it. Hmmm...interesting. Well, good luck." CLICK.
We consumers should revolt and not buy anymore computers until they work like toaster ovens, which is everyday, all the time.
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copyright 1998 Tim Bedore --- all rights reserved