Stop trying to pretend you know me

At some point during in Advertising 101, they must preach it from the pulpit loud and long: If you want to get someone's attention, hit 'em where they live. Go local.

It makes sense. As Big Brother-y as it can feel at times, I sort of like that sites I visit on a regular basis know my preferences well enough to recommend things I'd like. And while it doesn't always follow that ALL people from a certain region will be interested in the same things, it makes more sense to show me, an Ohioan, an ad for a leaf-blower than, say, alligator repellent.

(Disclaimer: I have no idea if there is such a thing as alligator repellent. It sounds sort of fake, like snipe hunting.)

But when did companies start simply inserting the name of your town or state in every ad, regardless of whether or not it makes sense?




Really? Did she? Is that mom even from Ohio? Or does her face also appear next to the Nebraska and Vermont ads? Because she and her cute little baby are just part of a stock photo suite, and that probably isn't even her kid, because she looks about 12?

(And why the ridiculously-specific (and yet devoid of a comma) dollar amount?)

And I hate the ones that mention the specific town even more:

"A woman from {Your Hometown} discovered the secret to better abs -- with NO WORKING OUT!"

"A {Your Hometown} father discovered the cure for chlamydia -- right in his backyard!"

Hm. Really? Our town is a teeny village surrounded by almost nothing but farmland and trees. You're telling me I could be shopping at Kroger next to the woman who figured out how to get a six-pack without exercise? Someone figured out how to use dandelions to cure venereal disease? Because that's all that's growing in backyards around here.

Advertisers: Stop trying to bond with me. I see through your little charade, and I remain unimpressed.

(Oh, and I don't have chlamydia. Just in case you were worried.)

Soapbox Theatre: I really, really, really, really, really hope none of my friends who are parents would do this.

(This story is a few days old (or possibly slightly older), so you may already be aware of it. But I just heard about it, so I'm annoyed NOW. Hence...)

What is becoming of our nation? SERIOUSLY.

A California school banned dictionaries for students. (See story here.)

Why? Because one of the students found a definition for oral sex, and parents were outraged.

OUTRAGED!

OK. I am not a parent. I have never been responsible for shaping and guiding a tiny person's value system.

But if and when I am?

I am not going to encourage things like banning the dictionary just so my little person can be shielded forever from something I'm too afraid to address with him or her myself.

Because that's what this reeks of to me. Sex (in all its many forms) is a thing. In the world. That people do. Every day. It is OUT THERE. It is EVERYWHERE. There is NO shielding kids from it, not if they're going to live in the world.

In my (admittedly inexperienced) opinion, it's a parent's job to take what is in the world and explain it to their kids. Help shape their opinions of the world and everything in it. Not that you're going to take a three-year-old and give him an explicit explanation of oral sex, of course -- that would be inane. But common sense should allow you, as a parent, to come up with a way of explaining things, at an age-appropriate level, to your child. I'm not going to pretend it won't be awkward. But it is (in my opinion) one of your responsibilities as a parent.

Taking away a dictionary that the school had purchased for advanced readers? Is cowardly, I think. We're not talking about a novel with subject matter designed to titilate. This is a dictionary. A learning tool. It probably also includes definitions for "behead" and "episiotomy." You can bet none of those parents want to explain to their first-grader what those words mean, but you can also bet that those words wouldn't inspire a parent to demand the dictionary be banned.

This kind of thing? Makes me depressed. I don't want a world where kids grow up without ever learning about things that make them uncomfortable. That is part of the world they are IN. There are so, so many things in the world I disagree with. But it just isn't feasible (unless you're Amish, which: more power to them if they can do it) to keep your kids away from everything the world has in it.

Instead, you just have to try to prepare them as best you can, keep talking to them and pray. Pray and pray a lot.

Can we not blame the dictionary?

Because, seriously? From the resumes I've seen from some recent college grads, and from some of the e-mails and Facebook postings and whatnot from that generation (and several others), the one thing we do NOT need to be getting rid of is the dictionary.

OK, so down off my soapbox I skip. I would love to hear from some of you who are parents: Am I totally off base? Do you agree? What would you have done in this situation?

P.S.: In the interest of full disclosure: After catching major (justified) flak for banning the dictionaries, the school did decide to allow them back, although parents can ask for their kids to use an alternative dictionary if they are still too freaked out by Merriam-Webster.

Soapbox Theatre: Episode 1

I'll try not to make a habit of this (because, truthfully, I hate politics and only know enough to be dangerous, anyway), but every once in awhile I hear about something that annoys me enough to talk about it. When I do, I've decided to call it:

My political views (such as they are; I'm not what anyone would call overly involved in anything more political than American Idol) generally tend to skew toward the conservative (albeit moderately conservative).

Growing up, this was because my parents' views skewed that way. My father was and still is a pretty staunch Republican; my entire family is devoutly religious. I emulated and mimicked what I knew.

In college, they were all over the place. I think this is pretty normal, right? You're in college, away from your family and everything you've grown up with, away from all the same ideologies you've always heard and believed to be true. It's your first taste of independence. Of course you're going to be all over the map, and most of the time the mantra is, "Eh. Whatever."

As a voting, working, tax-paying adult, my views tend to depend on how individual situations affect me directly. And most of the time, in my view, more government usually does not equal better.

We have a governing body for a reason: To keep society as a whole in some semblence of order, to establish laws that give us bodily protection, to give us guidelines. But when the governing body starts to tell us what we can and cannot say, especially to elected officials, I think they're overstepping the bounds of the authority we've given them.

A lot of people are saying a LOT of things about health care right now. I won't even pretend to be well-read enough to have an educated opinion about this -- my parents and my husband know far more about it than I do. But I do know this: I want to know that I'm allowed to say what I think about it, no matter who likes or doesn't like what I have to say.

South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson called President Obama a liar after he said he wouldn't extend healthcare to illegal immigrants. Now the House has released a primer that says its members are no longer allowed to call the President a liar, a hypocrite or cowardly (the latter for vetoing a bill).

Calling the President or any other House official a nitwit is apparently still cool, though, for some inexplicable reason (yes, the primer actually uses the word "netwit"; I believe the full term it uses is "half-baked nitwit," in fact). You can also call him a disgrace.

So it may seem like semantics. But calling someone a liar or a hypocrite is pretty direct. Calling someone a nitwit just makes YOU sound silly.

Yelling out "You lie!" in the middle of the President's speech was rude and disrespectful. It was inappropriate for the forum. (And, it's important to note, the rules in the primer only apply to House members, and only when the House is in session.)

But, as a good friend of mine is always saying, it's the principle of the thing. You'd hope that someone like Rep. Wilson would know enough to be respectful and hold his tongue until a more inappropriate moment, or to express his dissent in a more respectful manner. But do we have to go so far as to BAN the practice of calling out the President if someone really believes he's being dishonest or hypocritical?

And when are these restrictions going to seep out from behind the House walls and start applying to us?

I don't want a governing body that isn't beholden to the people it represents. We need to be able to tell our representatives that they're doing a great job, or that they're a big bunch of liars. And not allowing a member of the House (and maybe, someday, you or me) to speak out when we believe they're doing something we don't agree with or we think it's in our best interest... That scares me. That's a right I don't want to give up.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't think the President or anyone else in the government is necessarily out to get the rest of us. But it does worry me when I hear about things like this, about people being so willing to give up a right like free speech (even though this is just a tiny piece of that) in the name of being "appropriate."

Now, please, someone help me off this soapbox so I can go back to watching mindless television, before I actually break a sweat.