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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 15, 2008 / 9 Adar I 5768

Marketing garbage

By Lori Borgman

Lori Borgman
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It is a luxury I will die without: the $18 Rachael Ray garbage bowl.


Rachel Ray is the cute-as-a-button girl-next-door with the wildly successful "30-Minute Meals" shows. She also has a daytime talk show, a slug of cookbooks, cookware galore and now, her very own garbage bowl.


Who knew that the pinnacle of success would be having your name attached to a garbage bowl?


I'm pretty sure we've lost it.


It's a bowl, right? Plastic, even. You could get four big plastic bowls at any mega-mart for the same price, but because this is like the one Rachel Ray throws garbage in on her cooking show, it goes for 18 smackers.


The bowl doesn't have any special features. It doesn't have a suction bottom to anchor it to the counter, no pour spout and it's not rated for 1,200 degrees heat. It doesn't roll over, bark or play dead.


It's a bowl. A bowl for garbage.


Seems to me there might be some intermediate steps to try before buying a designer bowl to hold eggshells and banana peels. Here's a golden oldie: pull the trash can out from beneath the sink and put it by your feet when you work.


Or try this one: dump kitchen scraps in an old Cool Whip container. Or in an empty sour cream container. Or in an empty deli container.


My personal favorite is having a brown grocery sack by my feet when I cook. There's nothing like the satisfaction of making a hook shot with an empty tomato sauce can and hearing that glorious hollow "thud."


Or here's one - and, granted it's a little out there - hang an actual trash bag from a cupboard knob and use it for garbage.


But none of those solutions is marketable. You don't have to buy a single thing, you're using what you already have. You're being resourceful. What a dud.


I'm not knocking the garbage bowl, it's a good bowl. It does everything a bowl should do - it sits there without giving you any sass, holds things and looks very bowl-like.


I'm just wondering when we became so affluent, coddled, and cushy that we need designer bowls to hold garbage? Bowls remarkably similar to the bowls we already have.


Perhaps the garbage bowl is like a consolation prize. If I can't look like Rachel, or cook like Rachael, at least I can make garbage like Rachael.


If I can't cook like Emeril, at least I can buy knives like Emeril and chop like Emeril. If I can't be a domestic diva like Martha Stewart, I at least can buy her stemware, dinnerware, 600-count sheets, towels, muffin tins and play like I'm Martha.


It's always so much easier to buy the gizmos and gadgets than to actually acquire the skills.


Here's the real kicker to the garbage bowl. When you're finished dumping the apple peels, orange rinds, onion skins, garlic mush and tomato innards from this rough and tumble, guaranteed-to-last-for-many-years bowl, the instructions say, "Hand wash."


Sounds kind of prissy for a bowl that holds trash.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Lori Borgman is the author of , most recently, "Pass the Faith, Please" (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) and I Was a Better Mother Before I Had Kids To comment, please click here. To visit her website click here.

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© 2008, Lori Borgman

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