Jewish World Review April 22, 2004 / 1 Iyar, 5764

Media Person

Media Person
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Consumer Reports


Planet of the Hats


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Media Person is not big on shopping. Stores don't pull him--unless they sell something he can read. He eBayed approximately once, when it first caught on, and ever since, his user name has gone unused. His attitude toward flea markets is roughly the same as his attitude toward fleas. And yet he is fascinated by those little ads in the back of The New Yorker. Together, they seem to make up some lost community of singular craftsmen dedicated to pleasing wealthy eccentrics of exacting, if peculiar, taste.


Take, for instance, the ad for German hats. "Forget the Lederhosen," reads the somewhat mysterious headline. Actually, Media Person has never had any problem forgetting lederhosen since he rarely thinks of lederhosen in the first place and when he does, the preposterous image usually departs his brain within seconds.


Below the headline is depicted "The Tyrolean," which looks exactly as you would imagine. "Traditional Bavarian style," reads the copy. "Made of fur felt with an authentic bristle brush and matching four layer rope band. Fully lined in evergreen." The price is $200.


This raises many questions in Media Person's mind, chief among them being, 1) Is there a significant market for expensive Teutonic headgear in post-modern American society? 2) If so, who the hell are these people? and 3) Has there been some recent Tyrolean-hat scandal involving inauthentic bristle brushes?


Well, you never know. Media Person doesn't get out much but he's heard there are parts of the country where men routinely wear cowboy hats to work and play. For all he knows, maybe there are also regions where everyone walks around in alpine chapeaux and they're damned particular that the thing had better sport precisely four layers of rope band, not three or five.


Perhaps there are also nieghborhoods with numerous chip addicts. That would explain, MP supposes, the "Potato Chips to Die For!" ad. "Anchor's Chip of the Month is the source for unique potato chips," it crows. "A gift-worthy, incredible munchfest!" Though Media Person has never, to his knowledge, attended a munchfest, at least not a formal one, he finds it hard to believe that there exists a substantial bloc of eaters who demand potato chips of a quality beyond that available at your average supermarket. How much better than a standard potato chip could a gourmet potato chip really be? And even if it is appreciably better, do you really need a different kind of potato chip every month?


Finally, Media Person is beginning to think, civilization may have reached the point where there is such a thing as too much choice.

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There is even a choice even among goofy political toys here in the back-pages boutique. One ad hawks "The Talking George W. Bush Action Figure," though it fails to reveal what it is he talks about. One can only hope for the manufacturer's sake that the presidential homunculus has less trouble talking than its progenitor. But on a different page resides an ad for "The Axis of Evil finger puppet regime." Four evil ones are pictured, but very small, so that you may have trouble identifying one or two from the photo. Perhaps, Media Person mused, these two toys should be advertised together so that readers who are ambivalent about terrorism could grasp the Bush action figure in one hand (the right, no doubt) and the Axis of Evil quartet on the fingers of the other and let them engage in mock battle. (This to be done at home, of course, preferably under close medical supervision.)


Some items in the back are utterly inexplicable to Media Person. He cites an ad for a clothing concern called "mrhappycrack.com." The headline reads, "Mr. Happy Crack says…'A Dry Crack Is a Happy Crack.'" Pictured is a cartoon character who is unmistakably the aforementioned Mr. Happy Crack, since he is smiling and he is cracked. Now Media Person does not know what any of this means and what's more, he doesn't want to know what it means. He's sorry he even brought it up.


Animals are very big in the back. There is an ad offering works of art created by elephants. "Help a 4-ton starving artist," it says. There are for sale a hummingbird pin, a retriever pin, a cat pin, starfish earrings, a duckling sculpture, a portrait of a dog remembering 9/11 (yes, of course they do), and an ad exhorting us all to retire to "Fearrington Village" in Chapel Hill, N.C., a place that's "full of bluebirds, hollyhocks, belted cows and fascinating people of all ages."


Could it be, Media Person wondered, that these are the people who buy the stuff in the back of The New Yorker? And if you go there, will you find them all in Tyrolean hats, Mr. Happy Crack T-shirts, cow belts and Axis of Evil finger puppets?


Best not to find out.



JWR contributor Media Person -- a.k.a Lewis Grossberger -- is a columnist for Media Week. Comment by clicking here.

Up

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© 2004, Lewis Grossberger