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March 17, 2004
Make it stop.
It's surreal and endless. It's like waking up every morning and realizing it's been the same day for weeks. Someone should make a movie about that. Anyway, we are trapped in a spiral of infinite hell, a constant demand for more, more, more. It's the NPR fundraising campaign.
Don't get us wrong, public radio fulfills a very important need in the information industry. Who can forget their "No Stories About Michael Jackson News Marathon" a few months ago? And we've spent more hours in Lake Wobegone than we care to admit. But can't they just get more money from the Powder Milk Biscuit people? We don't need a new sweatshirt for a $100 contribution. And we definitely don't need the WGBH premium chocolates. They manage to work it into everything, too. "Snow squalls will continue this afternoon, with temperatures dropping into the 20s-- but consider how you can warm up from the cozy, satisfying feeling of contributing $50, $100, $150 dollars to support our meteorological department."
Alls we know is, we get flashbacks of walking through the streets of Istanbul being chased down by a guy selling toy tops. That combination of monumental annoyance and nagging guilt that we're ruining the world by keeping our money. And then the horror mulitplies because they schedule it at the same time every year as Girl Scout Cookie season. We can't stay home nor leave the house. The struggling organizations that make the world a better place are everywhere, spreading their wholesome evil of give, give, give. We can't take it anymore. Excuse us while we run screaming to Starbucks and The Gap.
Posted by The Twins at March 17, 2004 12:17 PM
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Comments
you know what they say, give 'till it hurts.
(ow)
Posted by: snowy at March 17, 2004 12:18 PM
Pledge week reminds me of a little kid throwing a tantrum in a supermarket so that he can get those Hulk popsickles.
Except that Public Radio's tantrum lasts 7-10 days, and will continue whether I give them what they want or not. (But it's a whole lot calmer, and the cause is considerably more important.)
Posted by: aaron at March 17, 2004 02:03 PM
Excellent point about the "working it into everything" shtick.
Related but not directly: PBS, as we all know, is made possible in part by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Either the Muppets or WBCN, I can't remember which, changed it to be the Corporation for Public Cod-Blasting. I still get a kick out of that.
Posted by: nikita at March 17, 2004 05:23 PM
I hear ya. And did you happen to surf by PBS this week? They were using an aging, balding Neil Diamond singing to a massive cheering crowd of Irish fans to raise money. I had a cold, which can be a little like being high, so I got kind of nostalgic and rested my remote but soon it started to feel like I was staring at a traffic accident, especially when a woman ran to the stage and he sang into her eyes;
Girl, you'll be a woman soon
Please come take my hand
Girl, you'll be a woman soon
Soon, you'll need a man
Any objections I might have to the predatory nature of the song were eliminated by the fact that the woman he was singing to was possibly in her 40's and god knows how old he is by now, and the dude is not carrying his age gracefully. He kept caressing her face and pretty much trying to make out with her and she kept spinning around and waving at her friends in the audience for the photo op. When the song was over, he could not leave it at that, he actually scolded her for not paying more attention to his overtures!
And then they would stop this embarrassing retro song fest and ask for money. In all my days as a cultural snob. I have never been so encouraged NOT to give money to educational programming.
Posted by: Sue Magoo at March 19, 2004 01:19 AM