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Dave Barry on apathy

If "Wish Bear" ate Herb, who would care?
by Dave Barry

If history teaches us any lesson, it is that the Treaty of Ghent was signed in
1576. No, hold it. Wrong lesson. What history teaches us is that the biggest
threat to the future of any great nation is: apathy.

What exactly do I mean by "apathy"? What I mean by "apathy" is: "sitting around
and being apathetic." And this is exactly what is wrong with this country
today. Survey after survey shows that Americans would rather relax on vibrating
chairs than "get involved" with issues such as nuclear waste. We cannot survive
this way as a nation. Try to imagine for a moment where America would be today
if patriots like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison had
decided to stay home and watch television instead of fighting the Revolutionary
War. We would still be part of England, that's where. Twenty-one miles from
French people. If the wind was right, they could spit on us. And trust me, they
would.

This is why I am calling on those of you who are within the sound of my voice
to drop whatever you're doing into an appropriate container and GET INVOLVED.
You CAN make a difference. One person, alone, if he really believes, can alter
the course of human history, the way my friend Gene did one time at a Burger
King. This was back during the "Herb" advertising campaign. Remember that? The
campaign where you were supposed to win $5,000 by finding "Herb," who was a
real "nerd." Ha ha! What fun! This campaign cost $40 million, and almost
overnight it transformed Burger King, in the eyes of the public, from a run-of-
the-mill fast-food joint into a run-of-the-mill fast-food joint that we all
wished would shut up.

So early one morning, during the heat of the "Herb" campaign, my friend Gene
walked into a Burger King to get coffee, and there was an elderly derelict
standing near the counter waving gently in the breeze, and Gene was suddenly
seized by a blinding flash of consumer-backlash inspiration. He pointed to the
derelict and shouted: "HERB!!" Then he turned to the counterperson and said: "I
found Herb! Where's my money?!" So the counterperson pointed out that the
derelict looked nothing like Herb, which caused ANOTHER customer, out of the
blue, to intervene as Gene's advocate. "The man found Herb," the advocate said.
"The man WANTS HIS MONEY." By now a small crowd had gathered, and the advocate
asked the derelict directly if he was Herb, and the derelict did not deny it.
"The man FOUND HERB," the advocate concluded, reasonably. "You got to GIVE THE
MAN HIS MONEY. Or at least some free food."

In the end, Gene got nothing, but that is not the point. The point is, he was
willing to GET INVOLVED, and if more of us had done the same -- if EVERY Burger
King customer, starting the first day, had made a point of loudly misidentify-
ing Herb -- then this particular $40 million campaign would have been squashed
like an earthworm under a cement truck, and the people responsible for it would
now be living horizontally on sidewalks. And all because SOMEBODY CARED.

Speaking of which, what about the Care Bears? I bet the Care Bear marketing
people spent MUCH more than $40 million teaching our children to love, trust
and -- above all -- demand that their parents purchase these adorable licensed
characters, and we parents did nothing to stop them. What could we have done?
I'll tell you what. The instant we realized what these people were up to, we
could have started telling our children bedtime stories wherein the evil
villains were Care Bears. "And then the little girl fell sound asleep," these
stories would go. "And then Funshine Bear ate her feet." If we had done this,
parents, today there would be thousands of tons of Care Bears rotting in huge
colorful licensed mountains out behind your local Toys "Backward R" Us, and the
Care Bear people, instead of spending our money, would be fighting with the
Herb people over used gutter cigarettes. And this would be a better world. What
can we do now? We can do something about these large stickers people have taken
to putting in the back windows of their cars, the ones that say: "CHILD ON
BOARD." Chances are you've seen these and asked yourself: What are these people
saying with these stickers? Do they think that if they DIDN'T have the
stickers, the rest of us would think: "Huh! Looks like there's no child aboard
that car! I guess I'll speed up and have an accident with it!"

What I figure is, these people are telling us they have children on board
because they're PROUD of this fact. They want us to NOTICE. And I say that we,
as involved citizens, should make them happy. At stoplights, we should honk our
horns, get out of our cars and call to other motorists: "LOOK! That car over
there has a CHILD ON BOARD!!" Then we should all gather around and press our
faces up against the car windows, staring at the child with frank admiration,
perhaps refusing to leave until we have obtained wallet photographs. Wouldn't
that be great? Come on, concerned citizens! Let's not wait for the "other guy"
to do it!

I also think EVERYBODY should run for Congress.


 
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