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TODAY Thursday 20 November 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Better to Receive than to Give

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal ran a front page article on Kalle Lasn, the former ad exec turned anti-consumerism crusader. Lasn is the founder of Adbusters, a Vancouver-based magazine that lampoons our lives as marketing units. Lasn has announced that the day after Thanksgiving -- the customary kickoff time for Christmas purchases -- will henceforth be celebrated as Buy Nothing Day, when people promise to observe a 24-hour shopping moratorium. There will be a public rally in Seattle that Friday; zealous participants will cut up their credit cards.

The immediate controversy stirred up by Mr. Lasn is his desire to run 30-second television ads that feature an unattractive pig and comparisons between North American consumption rates and those in Mexico, China, and India. All the networks save CNN have turned him down. Since Lasn was only prepared to pay $15,000 for the ads (which would have secured the Sunday morning at six o'clock time slot), he's probably won more coverage for his ideas through the Journal article than if his TV campaign had been accepted.

One of Adbusters' key allies is a new outfit in Burlington, Vermont called the Center for the New American Dream. Set up by grants from the Merck Family Fund and other green foundations, the Center "...is working to educate people about the social and environmental costs of excess and wasteful consumption." They too are making the news with seasonal jabs at the Great Mammon, this time with a public opinion survey that says that "70 percent of Americans would welcome less Christmas spending and gift-giving."

The Center hired a New York polling firm which conducted October telephone interviews with 800 adults from around the country. "How much would you welcome lower holiday spending and less emphasis on gift-giving?," the people were asked. 39 percent said "a lot;" 31 percent said "some;" 14 percent said "a little;" and 11 percent said "not at all." More than half the respondents said that their Christmas 1996 buying ran over into 1997 debts and more than a quarter said that they were still paying off those debts ten months later. Yikes.

My favorite data from the survey are the responses to a question which asked if couples could recall what their partner gave them last year. According to the Center's press release, "The survey found that 27 percent of people in a relationship could not remember the Christmas gift given to them last year by their partner -- and an additional 15 percent took a while to come up with an answer. Men were slightly more forgetful than women."

(I would like that 27-percent-who-can't-remember figure quite a bit higher, thank you, since I can't name a single Christmas present after 1958, which is when I got a simulated ice hockey game where miniature Montreal Canadiens spun around and sent marbles crashing into the goaltender of miniature New York Rangers. Friends and loved ones have completely wasted their efforts, and if I'm going to be in the chronic ingrate category, I want a lot more company than 27%. Luckily, I can't remember a thing I gave either. What's more incredible, though, is the bland assertion that men were only "slightly more forgetful than women." No way. Amnesia is directly related to virility, as science is on the verge of demonstrating.)

Unsurprisingly, people say they want to get off the treadmill. Half the respondents who don't set limits on gift-giving say they would set such limits if everybody else in the family agreed. And there's the rub. There are three big problems with securing family agreements. One, agreements mean you have to talk to everybody in the tribe, usually in a series of telephone conversations, and for some people that can be excruciatingly more painful than blowing a few hundred dollars from a mail catalogue. Two, such agreements are frequently broken, usually by family members who falsely claim that they don't care if their gesture goes unreciprocated. Three, almost everybody secretly loves to get lots of stuff and reasonably figures that the only reliable way to get lots of stuff is to give some away.

Christmas buying actually represents a smaller percentage of consumer purchases than ever before. It's not that people are spending less at holiday time; it's just that they're spending much more throughout the year. Birthdays are much more expensive than in the past, retailers say, and summer vacations often represent far bigger outlays than Christmas. Maybe the Adbuster people and the Center for the New American Dream people will throw some welcome roadblocks in the path of the upcoming seasonal shopping juggernaut. But I wonder if any unspent money will just migrate towards a sunnier time of the year.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE

Hibernicus has resurfaced. This time the pseudonymous scribbler examines the politics and public relations of the upcoming Kyoto conference and (one hopes) the ratification debate in the US Senate next year. All in all, says Mr. H, enviros better button their lips, back Bill Clinton's infinitely less-than-perfect proposal, muster arguments that will appeal to average voters, and then make sure that Senators are aware that a No vote will have undesirable electoral repercussions. As usual, you can find our resident hardballer in the Capitol Hill Spy feature of the Newsroom section.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

11/19: Wes Jackson's Problem with Agriculture
11/18: "Stay Home and Be Decent"
11/17: World Cups (Soccer; C02)
11/14: Amtrak, My Amtrak
11/13: Tim Wirth's Excellent Adventure
11/12: Monsters of Wellesley, Massachusetts
11/11: Armistice Day and the Next Great War
11/10: Mea Maxima Culpa
11/07: Inflexible Flyers
11/06: Meaningless Votes, Really

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