If there’s one thing I could pass on to readers for the New Year, it’s guarding against getting bilked. Almost daily we read about the people falling victim to unscrupulous scammers who promise instant wealth.
In Las Vegas, bank employees have counseled a number of people — usually those of advanced years — who attempt to withdraw their life’s savings on the basis of a stranger’s promise of instant wealth.
These people grew up in an era when a person’s word was his bond, where a handshake sealed a deal. My mother used to phone me, asking advice on a stranger’s promise, via telephone, to double the amount in her savings account if she’d only advance him a few thousand dollars. Because she grew up in an era of mutual trust, it was difficult for her to refuse the stranger’s offer outright. I’m glad she called me, although I suspect that on one occasion she was disappointed I didn’t give her a thumbs up on the deal.
Unsolicited promises of wealth also come in the form of television commercials.
The other morning (I almost never watch the tube in the morning but use the TV as an alarm clock), I observed an infomercial on a Spanish-language channel.
The 30-minute pitch showed a young woman placing a coin under her bed before retiring. As she slept, three light rays seemed to penetrate the mattress and settle in her heart, head and soul.
Then the off-camera voice promised us, the viewers, three things: better health, financial security and an improved love life.
I’m aghast at how a simple medallion can bring about so many beneficial changes. I didn’t see any religious images on the medallion but noticed symbols that appear in the pyramid on currency.
By their nature, infomercials are cyclical. It doesn’t really matter when you tune in; you’ll see the offer repeated several times.
In one sequence, a woman working in her cube receives an envelope from a man and discovers a goodly amount, all in cash. She embraces the envelope with the ardor usually reserved for a lover. Or maybe the benefactor really was her lover, settling an account with her from the night before . . .
Another woman is on the verge of ending a relationship with her beau by striking him but puts on the “miracle medallion” instead and soon finds herself romping along the seashore with the man.
The quarrel is repeated later in the commercial, and — thanks to the talisman — el hombre and la mujer soon adjourn to the beach. That repetition validates the notion that making up is enjoyable.
Now we have two bases covered: love and financial security. What’s missing? What about health?
A man obviously suffering from arm pain has his female companion rub the miracle medallion on the pained arm, and like magic, he’s cured.
All right. Many of us have lived through appeals guaranteed to restore our health, whether the product be Geritol for tired blood, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, to cure backaches or any of a slew of remedies we’re exposed to.
And we’ve listened askance as teens when, riding around in our cars in the ‘50s, we could get a bevy of AM radio stations. One station I recall asked us to “send $5” to some address “in Clint, Texas, and the Lord will save you.”
The miracle medallion offer, with a toll-free number constantly displayed, attempts to seal the deal by appealing to our sense of guilt, fear, reverence and awe. Here’s how:
A man with a beard and ministerial collar tells us that Jesus Christ wants us to have the medal. For insurance, he says he himself is never without the medallion, as he pulls it out of his shirt pocket and displays it. Never leave church without it. Having this man of the cloth holding this object deliver direct orders from the Lord makes it tough to refuse.
But wait, there’s more. Although we have only speculation as to the physical appearance of Jesus, most believers agree he was slim, slightly built and bearded. In fact, only a few years ago, the cover of a national magazine displayed perhaps 40 images of Christ. Interestingly, the appearance of the personage was influenced, ethnocentrically, by the geographic region in which Christ was worshiped.
Northern Europeans depicted Christ as fair-skinned and Anglo-Saxon; worshippers closer to the equator pray to a darker-skinned savior.
But last Saturday’s infomercial pushed the envelope w-a-y too far. In this case, a figure just as convincing as any we’ve seen or imagined, appears in the commercial. The beard and profile provide us with an image just as plausible as any that appeared in “The Passion of the Christ,” “The Greatest Story Ever Told” or “The Ten Commandments.”
So our eyes are drawn to a familiar image. That’s not the problem, but in the anachronism of the millennium, what is Jesus doing? Why He’s using a magnifying glass to inspect the talisman He’s apparently endorsing. What would Jesus really do?
And this is where we totally empathize with those who lament the commercialization of Christianity. A priest (though he’s never identified as such) tells us Christ wants us to have this miracle medallion, and a man with a dismaying similarity to our conception of Christ Himself, inspects the object with an Office-Max-type magnifying glass that didn’t exist in Biblical times.
As we enter 2006, l hope to convince others that I’m not the Iconoclast of the Century. I don’t go around knocking the beliefs of others. And I respect people’s right to worship and believe as they choose, or not to worship or believe at all.
But such a blatant attempt to assure buyers that their physical, financial and social well-being depends on having the metallic rabbit’s foot handy really insults the masses.
It makes us wonder whether a talisman-possessing individuals whose love life remains sour, whose possessions remain in the repo depot and whose carpal tunnel syndrome continues to cause pain would ever be entitled to their money back.