Media and other headaches

Have you seen the television advertisement for the Subaru Impreza that asks the rhetorical marketing question, “What makes a Subaru a Subaru?”

The answer, oddly enough, is not “An Obama ‘08 bumper sticker.”

No, the answer to “What makes a Subaru a Subaru?” is “love.”

In fact, the automaker now has an entire campaign devoted to the theme of “love” as the prevailing emotion evoked by its products. There’s even an ad on Youtube called “Love Letters” in which real Subaru owners read personal letters about their attachments to their cars.

The Subaru slogan struck a nerve with me from the moment I first heard it, and not because I drive a Honda. Rather, what bugs me is our cultural fixation on feelings as the basis for every sort of decision, from which car we park in our garages to which candidate we elect to public office.

Perennial late-night class clown David Letterman has at last apologized to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her family for his "flawed" joke about her daughter.

In my effort to promote civility and manners, I'm not going to repeat the joke itself. If you didn't hear what Mr. Letterman said last week, just think back to sophomore year in high school and recall the tasteless humor of the smarmiest guy you knew. It was that sort of thing.

This wasn't the first time Mr. Letterman got his audience laughing at the expense of Mrs. Palin.

It's not scientific, but it's telling nonetheless that 80 percent of those who took People magazine's online survey about reality-TV stars Jon and Kate Gosselin say the couple's current struggles aren't just the typical ups and downs of married life, but instead are reason for them to "step back and re-prioritize."

Updating you cave-dwellers, Jon and Kate Gosselin are The Learning Channel (TLC) parents of eight children - a set of 8-year-old twin daughters and sextuplets, age 5. Their raucous home life has been chronicled for four seasons as they adjusted to, and then mastered, their roles as parents of multiple multiples.

Along the way, the reality show "Jon & Kate Plus 8" has offered voyeuristic glimpses into the Gosselins' marriage and extended-family relationships.

The folks in one northern Michigan community can rest easy because it's clear their high school computer teacher is on the ball. Last week in the computer lab, a student who completed his video production assignment killed time by surfing the Internet on a school computer. But the teacher (unnamed in news stories) caught a glimpse of the screen and put a stop to the student's consumption of vile and vulgar Internet content.

Just what despicable Web site was the young man viewing? Here's fair warning before you read on ... consider sending the children out of the room or at least shielding their eyes. He was reading Foxnews.com.

According to reports, when the student, a senior, was caught scanning headlines on Foxnews.com the teacher publicly berated and belittled him for reading the "wrong" news.

Thank goodness there are teachers like this all across America, protecting our children from the dangerous influences of the Internet.

Not.

I walk into the kitchen just in time to hear my 11-year-old daughter summarize for her father the destiny of anyone cast as a celebrity apprentice for Donald Trump: "It's the sign that you're just another clump of dried seaweed washed up on the beach of pop culture."

There's no time for a lecture on cynicism before school, and besides, she has a point.

The cast of NBC's upcoming "The Celebrity Apprentice" series has somehow managed to offer gainful - if short-term - employment to country singer Clint Black, former NBA star (and tattoo canvas) Dennis Rodman and the perennially Botoxed Joan Rivers.

Times are tough. People need work, and as gigs go, even a short-lived career with "The Donald" can be lucrative. Remember Omarosa? And besides, these celebrities work for charity.

But I digress.

School days are hectic enough around my house without a distraction as powerful as the TV. It's all we can do to make lunches, review the day's plans and find the homework that never seems to make it into the backpack the night before.

The last thing we need on a school day is Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich to throw off our routine. But I confess I wish I'd had the TV on Tuesday when the embattled governor talked about his "Capra-esque" existence and why, for the sake of his young daughters, he launched a media blitz to salvage his reputation.

Mr. Blagojevich told the morning crew at CBS that taking his case to the court of public opinion was not an effort to soften the potential jury pool for his federal trial, a conclusion he called "cynical." Rather, he said it was a last-ditch attempt to get the Illinois state Senate to change its rules and allow him to air his audiotapes and summon specific witnesses to his defense at his impeachment trial.

Unfortunately, the Illinois Senate was actually holding its impeachment trial while the governor made the rounds on the morning-news circuit, so I guess they were too busy to watch TV. (Or maybe they were just trying to find last night's homework.)

Here's my October "no surprise" - I'm officially sick of the presidential election.

I'm not sure exactly when I reached my saturation point - somewhere between the YouTube video of a Yoko Ono-esque woman directing the "Obama Youth Choir" and the opinion piece I read assessing the authenticity and relevance of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's "Minnewegian" accent. It's come to this.

No wait - it was Friday on an airplane bound for Wichita, Kan. I was chatting with a woman headed home for her high school reunion, when the subject of the previous evening's vice-presidential debate came up.

My seatmate and I both had missed it. For my part, a long-planned speaking engagement conflicted with the event. The woman in seat 5B had another reason.

"I actually can't bring myself to watch Sarah Palin," she said. "There's no way I could sit there and listen to anything she had to say."

Say it ain't so, seatmate.

I want to be careful not to seem overzealous. After all, a columnist loses all credibility by making sweeping generalizations or oversimplifying the cultural and social issues that confront us. My statements must ring true without hyperbole, if I'm going to be taken seriously.

With that caveat in mind, I submit: MTV is killing our culture.

Specifically, the annual cultural orgy known as the MTV Video Music Awards, held Sunday evening in Los Angeles, at which awards were given for outstanding achievement in the creation and production of music videos.

Suppose that we ignore the relative merits of music videos as an art form. Not since Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video have I seen one that captured my attention. But that one cost a cool bajillion dollars to produce, and no one wears wolf makeup or red leather jackets anymore.

I will never forget the Democratic National Convention of 1968. Not because I understood what was happening in the streets of Chicago regarding the police force, the Illinois National Guard and mobs of antiwar protesters, nor because I followed the political maneuvering that ultimately secured the nomination of Hubert Humphrey for president.

No, what I remember was the shriek my mother let out when she discovered that while the family was gathered around the TV in the family room, my 3-year-old sister had wandered off, found a pair of scissors and cut several huge bald spots into the back of her hair.

Mind you, I was only 7. My capacity to understand the political battle on TV was limited, so the drama around my sister's new "do" was for me a bit more concrete.

If my younger sister lacked appropriate supervision, the times were to blame. This was August in Detroit. The riot of the previous summer was as fresh on the minds of my family as the scene that unfolded in Chicago.

I doubt my grasp of the convention was little more than impressions, but this I knew - whatever was going on had my parents glued to the television. It had to be important.

They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. What happened in between this year was something like a fox, at least around my house.

Here are some March highlights in the life of Amy, my fifth-grader:

• Visited orthodontist

• Participated in science fair

• Learned what prostitutes do for a living

Thank you, Eliot Spitzer, for that last little educational nugget.

Sigh.