DirecTV, Michael Jackson, and Human Value

DirecTV has recently adopted a new client-attracting incentive in which current customers can receive $100 credit towards their bill for convincing a friend to sign up for DirecTV service. Their friend also receives the same $100 discount when they sign up. To advertise this new deal, DirecTV created a commercial in which a handsome white middle-aged man opens his front door and his friends' faces turn into crisp green $100 bills. He invites them all inside and the commercial depicts a group of Benjamin Franklin-faced folks laughing and having a good time while the host smiles from all the money he is saving.

Is this really the type of commercial that DirecTV should be airing? Is it okay for them to twist core values of friendship into a skewed relationship based on monetary value? Have our morals really been superseded by consumer ideals? To me this isn't okay-this is detestable. It's one thing to show John Doe driving a new car from all the money he's saved on DirecTV, or Jane Doe sporting her new dress and shoes at a fancy lunch spot with her best friend, but to appraise human relationships with dollar signs and decimal points is to undermine our moral core.

I ask these questions and pose these hypotheticals because I too am a consumer individual; I too live in America and buy and sell and work to make money just like everyone else; I too drive a couple of blocks instead of walking because "I don't have enough time" or "I'm too lazy"; I too eat Cheetos and drink too much beer on occasion. I ask these questions, though, because I was taught to ask questions instead of take answers for granted.

Maybe I'm making too big a deal out of this whole thing. Maybe I'm just that angry elf that has too much time on his hands and not enough money in his pockets, but I'm asking YOU: Doesn't this commercial bother you just a tad? Doesn't the idea of turning your friends into money like a cash cropper turns corn into cow feed throw you for a little loop? Am I taking crazy pills or is this commercial semi-foundational to the buy-throw away-buy consumerist ideals of dispensability that comes through way too much in all facets of our society.

What happened to Norman Rockwell and the local superstars? Why do commercials like DirecTV's slip by our subconscious without any regard for their fundamental message? Why do we care more about Michael Jackson's autopsy and Jon and Kate's divorce than a potential war with Iran or the forgotten war in Iraq and Afghanistan (yes, we're still there)? I diverge. All I'm trying to say is that a little TLC might work better to sell a product than an image of a dead green President replacing the heads of our loved ones.