I looked up from my computer game, expecting a Red Cross commercial or an ad for some other charitable organization. Instead, what I got was a commercial for a local retailer of washers and dryers.
Really? Is that what we're calling "life's necessities" these days? Are there people out there whose lives are coming to an end because they don't have a matching set of Maytags? And here I was under the impression that things like food and clean water and medicines for common diseases were life's necessities. It's a good thing that the guy from the washer and dryer store is there to enlighten me.
Normally I would just roll my eyes at the combination of stupidity, ignorance and arrogance typical of most of us Americans (myself included). However, I recently started reading a book by noted economist Jeffrey Sachs called The End of Poverty - a book that begins by detailing the appalling numbers of people dying for lack of life's REAL necessities, stories of people dying from malaria because they can't get nets and of AIDS hospitals that have the dying stacked so deep that there are two to a bed and often one on the floor next to the bed. It makes me so mad!
And you know what the worst part is? As I mentioned in a previous post, Melissa and I are getting ready to move to Oklahoma City. The house we're moving to does not have gas, so our gas dryer isn't coming with us. Which, of course, is a tragedy. As I said to my wife, we can't just hang up our clothes around the house to dry (as probably the majority of people in the world do, when they get the chance to wash their clothes), we need an electric dryer.
So in the end, I can't be too mad at the guy on TV. After all, it's me he's talking to...and I can't seem to stop listening.
1 comment:
Actually most of the world doesn't have a washing machine...let alone a dryer...
I'm not ready to wash all my clothes by hand...but I don't think I'm going to use a dryer anymore unless it is something really heavy that would take days to dry here like towels...
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