When I first heard about the National No-Call List, I was elated: after all the times I'd been bullied, badgered, and bombarded by telemarketers and was too polite simply to hang up on them, it was good to know that someone was finally going to bully them back. And as soon as Internet registration for the list became available, my girlfriend signed us up.
But then I started thinking: these poor folks are just trying to make a living like the rest of us. Sure, they're annoying, but if annoying were a criterion for people having to cease and desist from earning an income in a particular line of work, there would be a lot of other people who should have to undergo similar restraints. At the top of the list would be politicians, who go way past annoying. W.'s inability to pronounce 'nuclear'or 'nuke-ewe-lur,' as he would have itis annoying. Spending billions of dollars to rehabilitate a country he unilaterally decided to wage war against while hundreds of thousands of his own citizens live in povertywell that's downright irritating: irritating as a heart attack without universal health insurance. And I only mention him because he's the most blatant example; if I linger too long on politicians, I won't have time to mention ... .
All the people who just drop by your house with a sales pitch, the worst of whom have to be the ones selling Jesus door to door, including the zealots who wanted to put us on a bus and take us to Indiana to their church for a day-long service. But holding a special place in my heart is the guy who tried to get me to donate money to D.A.R.E.that antidrug program in the schools. You'd think he would have been tipped off by the facts that I was in a bathrobe, my hair dripping wet, and that I had only opened the door about two inches that I wasn't really 'in a chatty place.' However, he persisted. Finally, to get rid of the guy, I told him I didn't believe in D.A.R.E. 'In D.A.R.E.? You don't believe in D.A.R.E.? But ... it's in the schools,' he said in disbelief. 'SorryI don't believe in it,' I said and closed the door. No, what I believe in is getting kids as stoned as possibleor I'm sure that's what he must have thought.
But as long as we're depriving people who annoy us of a livelihood, I think we should also go after the folks who do the commercials for Viagra that imply that getting laid makes you look taller, tanner, thinner, younger, buffer. If that were true, prostitutes would regularly be featured in Vanity Fair.
And there's the 'can you hear me now' guyI can't be the only one that wants to slap him and tell him no one wants to hear him. And what about the commercials that show that if you smoke a joint, you will accidentally shoot your friend with a gun?
I would also like to see someone rein in Gilbert Gottfried, who has built a comedy career on the premise that simply shouting things makes them funny; John Stossel, who should give all of us a break from his incessant whining and biased reporting ( he once tried to make a case that organic produce was bad for you and then it turned out his primary source was, like, a pesticide company ) ; and all the media people who think we give a rat's tushy about the whole 'Bennifer' debacleespecially whoever coined the name Bennifer.
But apparently the key here is that the person or persons must be annoying on the telephone. If that's the case, it's a good thing my grandmother is no longer among the living because few people's phone calls have ever been more aggravating than her's! But isn't that what caller ID is all about, making sure you only talk to the people you want, when you want to?
I should count my blessings, though: apparently, if there is anything that pisses off the American public more than queer people wanting the equal opportunity to have their long-term committed relationships sanctioned, it's telemarketers calling to sell them better phone rates.
Copyright 2003 by Yvonne Zipter. E-mail yz@press.uchicago.edu .
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