"Buy, buy, buy"

"Buy, buy, buy"

Here I am, reading the newspaper on a Monday morning. . . .

I see an ad for Verizon. Which, I discover, is sponsoring the Nsync tour. Fine. Presumably teenage girls can rack up more minutes on their limited dialing plan than their parents can afford. But those ads for credit cards that can be yours regardless of whether you have two nickels to your name have to appeal to someone. . . . Do they have debtors' prisons any more? Do they let you have cell phones there?

Then I see a small feature story about how there is a "#1 Fan Barbie," with the plastic fetish shilling Nsync. It's the first time said übermodeldoll has ever had such a tie-in (although one can only suspect that there are multitudinous non-official tie-ins that have nothing to do with what Ken would find appropriate). Is there a limit to the number of Barbies that any little girl can own (I don't even want to think of the grown women who have trouble arranging their Barbies in light of their more recent Beanie Babies obsession: manufactured housing only has a limited number of spaces for knick-knacks—or is that "treasures"?)? Do they have debtors' prisons any more? Do they let you bring your "little friends"?

There is a disturbing trend here.