Was pleased to get a phone call yesterday from long-time Lawrenceville friend, Karen C. We had a long, satisfying talk while Pat was having breakfast (at about 1:30), but when I went back in the kitchen, he told me he didn't feel well. He was very pale and I helped him back to bed. He slept until 5:00, but after that, seemed somewhat better. However, he ate little dinner--I hope this doesn't signify a downward turn in his illness.
Today is show day! We meet at 12:30, so will be able run through it before we actually go on. According to the flyer, it starts at 3:00, but we're still not sure if some other activity happens first. Okay, we'll play it by ear.
Wider: Those television commercials for the military make me crazy. Of course, the ad people are much too savvy to push their devil's work directly. Instead, they lure impressionable young people by showing soldiers performing admirable feats of strength (rappelling up a building, jumping out of a plane) and acting as humanitarians, almost always with a gang of laughing, adoring children as foils. You get the impression the major purpose of the armed services is to bring aid and comfort to suffering humanity when they're not having fun keeping in shape.
The ones aimed at parents are even more insidious. They portray earnest, soft-spoken youngsters and serious-minded mothers or fathers tip-toeing around the subject of signing up. These little plays are invariably in modest--but respectable--settings (a city apartment, a country kitchen) and feature actors with whom the viewer can identify. The son or daughter is mildly attractive, intelligent, and articulate and the parent is solemnly concerned, but "listening."
Of course these ads target the poor, cannon-fodder class. I wonder how many of them understand that a host of well-paid whores--writers, psychologists, and film-makers--are employed to entice them to become hired killers. Considering we never see the shredded bodies of either our soldiers or "the enemy"--let alone the little children we accidentally slaughter--one could be persuaded that the military is just another path to find one's place in life.
It isn't.