exitstrategy

It’s Sunday night which means a new episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.  What used to be a show about giving needy families new homes, is now a show about giving new homes to families affected by the rarest and most depressing/horrifying/fatal diseases/conditions.  For example, tonight’s episode is about building a home for a mom who has no lower body. My problem with this show is not just the fact that the show is the most blatant example of manipulating people’s emotions (e.g. you are heartless, viewer, if you don’t quiver when you look at this regular dad with 4 feet).  My problem with the show is that is perpetuates America’s problem with the quick fix. We don’t really want to do anything unless it can be tied up all pretty in a one-hour episode.  I mean we don’t really want to know how hard life is for the mom with no lower half, but we want to see her fancy new pad that is designed to make it easier for her to make waffles for the family.  (I should not admit this, but when I saw the preview I could not stop thinking about that scene from the movie Kids where that guy goes through the subway asking for change and singing “I have no legs.”  I am definitely going to hell.  And, definitely not going to get a fancy new pad making it easier for me to live like a spinsta (i.e. with a holographic husband who greets me, listens to my work woes.)) I recently learned that after the show stops airing, these families face a whole host of problems.  First, there are all kinds of structural problems with the homes since, shockingly, homes are not supposed to be constructed in a few days.  Second, the families are left to pay insanely high taxes on their new high value homes which they often cannot afford.  Third, an all pink bedroom is usually not enough to make life better for a child.   We don’t see this stuff, of course.  It is too complicated.  I understand the lure of the quick fix.  In fact, I fully expect my next job to be super fabulous and require little work and literally fall into my lap.  But judging by how bad things are now (and how much worse they will get), maybe it is time for us as a whole to move past the quick fix.  This means that every single news show can stop airing The First 100 days every few seconds, with lead ins like “Has Obama fixed America’s healthcare crisis this week?  No and so he is a failure.”  Or, at least that is the angle taken by this one correspondent on CNN - I cannot think of his name but that dude is SCARY.  He has brown hair and a super angular nose and looks like he may keep liberals locked up in his basement.    And with that I am going to rub on some Fat Girl Slim from Bliss (while eating australian licorice, the most perfect food on the planet, oh yeah I am off southbeach) to prepare for my upcoming trip to Florida.  NOTE: the quick fix, while inappropriate for world issues and economic problems, is still perfectly acceptable as a manner of dieting.   

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