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Watching TV on the bus
Teen TV novelizations invade bookstores and void the teenage mind.
By Carina Chocano
[03/03/00]

The tyranny of "Abercrappie"
My brother is under the spell of a company that promotes the frat-boy free-for-all.
By Damien Cave
[03/03/00]

When the revolution comes
We invite readers to respond to the Family for Sale series with grand plans, brainstorms and blueprints for a better tomorrow.
By Jennifer Foote Sweeney and Amy Benfer
[03/03/00]

Home labor
Stay-at-home moms chase pocket money and "a life" through a revived home-party selling industry. The overhead is low -- and so are their earnings.
By Nora Macaluso
[03/02/00]

Don't ask, don't sell
My parents' experience as network marketers soured me for the new wave of home parties.
By Kerry Ose
[03/02/00]

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By Nick Gillespie

March 6, 2000 | It's Saturday morning, but I'm making my 6-year-old son Jack go to school. Not to an "enrichment program," or a music lesson, or any of the other "supplemental learning environments" so coveted by anxious parents desperate to give their kids an edge on the Jones brats next door and those little Smith bastards down the street.

Funny thing is, Jack doesn't even know class is in session. That's because this pedagogical exercise is taking place right in our family room, smack dab in front of that universally acknowledged incubator of bad posture, bad attitude and every other social pathology known to all advanced human societies: the TV.

Also Today Consumed by consumption Shoplifting brand-name jeans is more honest than buying them. By Amy Benfer

Today's lesson plan involves "Pokémon", the massively popular -- and totally inscrutable to adults -- cartoon series about 150-plus different species of "pocket monsters" who beat the living hell out of one another at the behest of their humanoid "trainers" (who repay such loyalty by stuffing the creatures into tiny containers called pokéballs). "Pokémon" is precisely the sort of fare that makes consumer activists howl about capitalism's insatiable need for new markets and the vanishing line between programming and commercials.

Such criticism, however accurate, is almost wholly beside the point. This is the world we and our children live in, and if it isn't cartoon monsters being wagged in our faces while being told to Buy! Buy! Buy! then it is something else -- whiter teeth, say, or an Ivy League degree, or flatter abs, or the moral satisfaction of pledging $100 to PBS and receiving an emblazoned tote bag.

This is hardly as dire as it sounds. As James B. Twitchell puts it in his recent book, "Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of Materialism," "Consumerism is not forced on us. It is not against our better judgment. It is ... our better judgment. We are powerfully attracted to the world of goods." Twitchell suggests "we call them goods, not bads" for the simple reason that, at rock bottom, we like them.

To be sure, "Pokémon" is an unapologetic, nonstop pitch for an ever-expanding universe of toys, video games, action figures, backpacks, branded candy, clothing, you name it. When the first Pokémon condoms and cigarettes show up a few years down the road, no one will even think to bat an eye. The series' tag line -- "Gotta catch 'em all!" -- is a none-too-subtle directive to consume early and often, and that command is reiterated throughout the show's ear-splitting theme song ("Pokémon!/Gotta catch 'em all/It's you and me/I know it's our destiny ...").

Just to make sure the kids don't forget any of the individual types of Pokémon they might want to hector their parent to buy in one form or another, most episodes conclude with a hip-hop chant that names each and every variety available, from the "psychic" Pokémon Abra, straight on through to the "ghost" Pokémon Zubat. If you've yet to experience it, consider yourself lucky. Trust me, it's a rap far more obscene than anything 2 Live Crew ever performed in concert.

So what am I possibly hoping to teach my child by exposing him to such shameless -- and insistent -- shilling? Only this: How to choose wisely in a world of rapidly proliferating choices.

As economists W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm documented for the Dallas Federal Reserve in 1998, between the early '70s and the end of the century, there has been a magnificent profusion of consumer goods from which to choose. These range from the trivial (there are almost 30 varieties of Pop-Tarts on your grocer's shelves, up from three in the early '70s) to the more important (we can choose among some 140 over-the-counter pain relievers, up from 20).

Vastly expanded choice covers virtually every aspect of the economy: New book titles (around 78,000 annually, up from about 41,000); two- and four-year colleges and universities (around 3,700, up from about 2,600); contact lenses (around 36, up from one); even McDonald's menu items (more than 40, up from 13).

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