Walmart Commercials

I've got some real issues with most of the commercials on tv, but this one's gotta be the worst.

It's a Walmart commercial for an HDTV - the lady's talking about how getting this HDTV will bring her family together, because everyone's going to huddle around the big screen during the entire holiday season, and presumably for the rest of their lives.

That commercial sums up everything that's wrong with anything in this world. That's right. Think of a problem, trace it to its roots, and you'll find the Walmart commercial. In fact, even if I didn't know anything about Walmart, I would ban the store right now and the corresponding ad agency just for producing that ad. Because not only does it promote a torpid unhealthy lifestyle, it also subjects entire families to brainwashing and utter dependence on mass media. Oh and it's not the type of mass media that encourages any sort of free thought or debate, no it's the kind that tells you exactly what you need to know while you nod in blind agreement.

One day if I could, I'd ban television. I find the Internet mildly tolerable only because it has some type of interactive component (chat rooms = free speech; blogs = freedom to create your own world). Online video games are alright because of the (fake) social aspect. But television has no redeeming qualities. At all. And the Walmart ad, the fact that it's even accepted as a commercial on network television without a murmur from anyone else, means those very values of slothness and passivity have wrought their way so deep into our society as to become part of who we are, so deep that every family now "needs" a "home theatre" system.

My family's just like the Walmart family. I've got pieces of a home theatre system myself. And I can't get away from it.