For We Are a Simple People

Just saw a news article on the foreclosure of yet another house built by the "reality" program, Extreme Makeover, Home Edition. Apparently there have been several foreclosures when the owners somehow manage to acquire a hefty mortgage as well as the keys to the house. Occasionally, the mortgage will be paid by the home's builder or some other philanthropic group or individual, in which much brouhaha is made; but apparently the family is saddled with the mortgage on an overly lavish mini-mansion.

This particular program is a perfect example of the subject line of this blog. We tend to believe whatever we are told, and almost never ask the most obvious of questions. Being simple can be a charming trait, but too often it is a very dangerous one. There is all too frequently too narrow a space between being simple and being gullible, and beyond gullible lies the predator-filled jungles of stupidity.

I think I've used Extreme Makeover, Home Edition as an example before, and I really don't mean to pick on it, but let's take a look at an average show, shall we?

The entire project, it is emphasized, takes place in the space of seven days, which is pretty good, since it took God six days to create the universe.

The show begins on a bus speeding toward the family to be featured on the show. The crew watches a video assumedly made spontaneously by the family, who are all included in the shot. Who took the picture? Does everyone have a video camera? Is it a requisite for being considered for the show? Someone in the bus is apparently kept busy peeling onions, for the entire crew, listening to the family's plight, have tears streaming down their cheeks by the end of the presentation. Ty Pennington, their leader, solemnly asks the rest of the crew if they think they can help the family out. I often wonder what would happen if anyone said "No"?

So the bus pulls up in front of the family's usually ramshackle and desperately in need of repair home.
The crew gets out and Ty, using a bullhorn I would love to shove down his throat, screams "Gooood Morning, Blefelenskewiczenhoffer Family!" and immediately the front door of the house bursts open and the family rushes out, jumping up and down and radiating utter surprise and stunned joy. Was no one upstairs asleep when the bus pulled up? Or in the bathroom? Or out in the back yard? Or at the grocery store? No, they had to have been clustered around the door so that by the last syllable of the word "family" they'd be rushing out to greet the crew.

After the unconfined joy settles down a bit, and everyone has hugged everyone else, Ty informs the family that they are going on vacation...immediately! No one had any plans for the day or the week? No one had to call the boss and tell them they weren't going to show up for work? On a couple of occasions, the family was told they were going to Paris--"Paris, France," lest anyone wonders what there is to do for a week in Paris, Illinois. Now, not only does the entire family have their bags packed, but they all have passports! (Well, doesn't every middle class family in Sheepdip, Nevada have passports? Several?)

So off the family....the family who half an hour before had absolutely no idea they had been selected for an Extreme Home Makeover....goes, and immediately, coming down the road, is an army of destruction/construction workers with bulldozers, cranes, and all sorts of heavy equipment. They immediately set to work demolishing the house. One might wonder, if one were prone to do so, and obviously no one ever does, what happens to the furniture. We know it must have been removed at some point because they like to put several cameras inside the house to film the demolition. But when? Did they just pitch it all out the window? The family's only been gone ten minutes.

What about house plans? What about permits? What about building materials and supplies? Obviously they just emerge out of a clamshell, like Athena.

And wham, bam, ziggity zoom, construction begins on a home for a simple family of five or seven or eleven that would make the Taj Mahal look like a squatters' shack. Fifteen foot vaulted ceilings! Domes! Towers! Minarets! Marble entry halls, elevators (in case one of the family has difficulty getting upstairs, which is almost always the case), walk-in wall-less showers, professional-chef kitchens!

And all the children are given designed-especially-for-them, utterly-impractical-within-three-years rooms: fairy castles and secret chambers and model railroad trestles.

And the construction is ruled over by a frenetic Ty Pennington, racing around like a madman while screaming into that damned bullhorn at every opportunity. Give that man a valium, for Pete's sake!

And the family returns and somehow the kids rush right to their own rooms (how did they know which room is theirs?) and euphoria reins. And after all the tears and expressions of joy, Ty Pennington says, with the deep, heartfelt sincerity which comes from having said exactly the same sixteen words at the end of every single show: "Well, I guess there's only one thing left to say. Welcome home, Blefelenskewiczenhoffer Family, welcome home!"

And then he hands them the keys. The mortgage, I assume, comes in the mail.

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