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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. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review April 2, 2008 / 14 Adar I 5768

Commercial (over)load

By Malcolm Fleschner


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It should come as no surprise that my latest idea for getting rich with barely any effort came to me while watching late night television. After all, late night programming is a treasure trove of information, whether from commercials for revolutionary home care products and innovative personal fitness solutions, or through all those infomercials featuring audiences who can barely contain their bladders in excitement over, say, a new battery-operated back scratcher.


Frankly, I feel sorry for people who, because they have 9-5 jobs or do not enjoy the pleasure of insomnia, are denied the fun of watching the commercials that only air on basic cable during the wee hours. While most suckers are wasting the night away in bed, resting up for another grinding day at the office, we late night viewers are busy learning how to blast our abs, grill the fat-free George Foreman way and "enhance" our masculinity, all while enjoying "hot chat" with other area singles and winning thousand-dollar settlements in fraudulent personal injury lawsuits.


All of today's over-the-top, low budget late night ads owe a debt of gratitude to the granddaddy of the genre, the Ginsu knife. Ads for Ginsu knives aired constantly during my youth, imparting important cultural lessons I wasn't getting in school. For example, from the ad's signature line I learned that, "In Japan, the hand can be used like a knife [video depiction of man karate chopping through two blocks of wood]. But it can't cut a tomato [video of hand karate chopping into a tomato]." At the time, everything I knew of Japanese culture came from Sunday afternoon creature double feature movies, so I was never entirely clear whether the ads were suggesting that Japanese people actually cut wood with a knife.


"It's no wonder their cities are helpless against the near-constant onslaught from men in crappy-looking monster suits," I recall thinking.


Still, as the commercials clearly showed, Ginsu knives were perfect for anyone whose unusual culinary demands required a kitchen knife that could cut through nails, tin cans, radiator hoses and, in rare circumstance, actual food. Also anyone who appreciated the whiff of exoticism that came with purchasing a vaguely Far Eastern-sounding product that was actually manufactured in Fremont, Ohio.


But, to borrow a line from the Ginsu knife ads, that was not all. We 1970s-era TV aficionados also regularly had our viewing interrupted by ads for big time recording artists I'd never heard of like Roger Whittaker, Zamfir ("Master of the pan flute") and Slim Whitman. As an ignorant kid, I assumed that these were just a bunch of has-been performers who could only afford to advertise their records during little-watched afternoon television shows. Once I grew a little older I realized the truth, which was that they were has-beens who could also afford to advertise during little-watched nighttime shows.


I admit that I always liked Zamfir because his name made him sound like some sort of crazed, pan flute-playing villain from a James Bond movie:


Bond: "You're mad, Zamfir! You'll never get away with this!."


Zamfir: "Oh, I think I will, Mr. Bond. With my giant orbiting speakers in place, the entire world will soon be hypnotized into submission by the strains of my haunting pan flute melodies. BWA-HA-HA-HA!!!!!"


My favorite ads, however, were for Slim Whitman's records, because they included the singular boast that Whitman had, "sold more records than Elvis and the Beatles combined." Eventually someone pointed out to me that this seemingly dubious claim was technically true since Elvis and the Beatles had never combined to put out an album. Either that or Slim was only counting records that the artists in question had sold personally, as he did regularly out of the back of his beat-up 1972 Chevy van.


But to get back to the topic of this column, which is my new get rich quick scheme, it recently occurred to me that many of the late-night ads these days aren't for actual products, but instead promote seminars viewers can attend to achieve a variety of laudable life goals, such as figuring out how to hear Donald Trump talk for an hour.


Of course, the people behind these ads are following a fundamental tenet of business success, which is that while you'll never get rich by attending phony-baloney self-improvement seminars, you can get rich by duping others into attending phony-baloney self-improvement seminars. I simply plan to take the idea one step further - which is why my fellow later-nighters will soon be seeing commercials for my ground-breaking self-improvement seminars on how to put together self-improvement seminars.


I figure that with this audience my idea can't miss, especially when viewers learn that if they act now, I'll throw in a free cordless back scratcher.

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

JWR contributor Malcolm Fleschner is a humor columnist for The DC Examiner. Let him know what you think by clicking here.


Previously:

02/20/08: An overdose of reality
02/14/08: A developing situation
01/30/08: I can tech it or leave it
01/02/08: Confessions of a coke addict
01/02/08: Our bills are due
12/13/07: Going (to lunch) once, going twice…
11/28/07: Out with the old
11/06/07: My latest pet project
11/06/07: Can't tune it out
10/23/07: Something special in the hair
09/12/07: Can I have your attention, please?
09/12/07: Houston, we have an image problem
08/21/07: In the heat of fashion
08/09/07: Let's get in the game
06/13/07: You gonna eat that?
05/08/07: That's disinter-tainment
05/02/07:You Are (not) Getting Sleepy...
04/18/07: No time like Father Time
03/15/07: Deface the Nation
03/08/07: More gifts? You shouldn't have
02/22/07: Relationships can be such a chore
12/05/06: Who's calling the shots?
11/09/06: I'm taking selling to a whole new level
10/27/06: Some skills are beyond repair
10/18/06: You can't tech it with you
10/04/06: Award to the wise
08/24/06: Phrased and Confused
08/09/06: We're Gonna Party Like it's $19.99
07/19/06: Just Singing in the Brain
05/24/06: Who says you can't go home again?
05/11/06: When nightly news stories go off script
04/26/06: Cents and sensibility: A thought for your pennies
03/16/06: The day the Muzak died
02/23/06: Checkbook diplomacy begins at home
02/15/06: Today's toys: Where learning means earning



© 2006, Malcolm Fleschner

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