let's make a deal

In December of 1963, the TV game show “Let’s Make A Deal”, premièred with host Monty Hall promising audience contestants that they could make thousands of dollars by just simply holding a pink piece of paper in their pockets. It was a show that was full of temptation, gluttony and greed. The show ran its course of television years and went to the great retirement studio only to be resurrected in October of 2009 and hosted by Wayne Brady.

The simple premise of this game show is to offer an assortment of prizes either hidden behind large to small boxes or lurking behind door number one, two or three. Usually the audience member is selected because he/she is wearing some outrageous costume, and the first trade is a very innocent a hand comb for a look at what’s behind the box, or hand over a piece of lint to have curtain number three open. The audience member is then lured into wanting more; never realizing the old adage something for nothing usually leaves you with very little.

Oscar Wilde wrote “…that Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life…” And with the resurrection of “Let’s Make A Deal” and with the art of marketing and the bottom line we can follow that adage letter to letter.

We, the people, are told that this is America and we deserve all the oil we want. And we are reminded that bigger is better, more is mandated, and finite has no meaning in the American culture. We start out with the Industrial Revolution, become quite sated in materialistic needs in the 50’s and with the Bush/Cheney dictatorship have hidden energy policies created for the consumer with the corporation benefiting the most.

We decide to trade a cleaner environment for bigger cars, mansion style homes, and appliances that eat and eat energy. We trade the safe and secure for door number one.

We want to compete with the Jones’s and decide that regulations and rules make the government too ‘Big Brother-ish’, so we permit our elected politicians to overlook sane and sensible. As long as money is being made, and the promises of trickle down economics still resonate, we decide to move forward with our luck and trade door number one for the hidden gems behind door number two.

We sing the mantra of ‘…its for the children…’ and do the deeds we do because in some twisted machination of the truth disguised as greed and gluttony, we believe not thinking about the future, but homing in on the here and now, will create a better tomorrow.

Learning nothing from the Financial Disasters or the debacles with the Health Insurance Cartels, we still believe that the CEO’s of corporations have the best interests of the individuals in mind as they promise a brighter future. We hear the lullaby of ‘drill baby drill’, and are told by Conservative Right wing talk show hosts that to be a stronger America we need to cut the pipeline to those damn Arabs, and build new pipelines in Alaska, off the Pacific and Atlantic and in the Gulf of Mexico. In a deafening silence we hear very little about alternative energies, and if those voices manage to be heard at all, we are reminded it will take too long to create alternative energy supplies, so lets continue to ‘drill baby drill’.

And so ex-Vice President Cheney holds secret meetings with oil executives, the mostly corporate driven Republican Congress nod excitedly as their donors and lobbyists from the oil companies feed their pockets with cash and the American public with lies, and the PR companies, paid in full by the Oil Cartel, promise a cleaner and brighter America. We pooh, pooh sissy people like Al Gore when he wants to speak the inconvenient truth, and we praise loopy loose minded people like Palin who say ‘to take back the pride and soul of America is not to find clean energy but to rape the land and seas of this great nation.’

And knowing all we know, ignoring any to all the facts, relying on false promises made by lying politicians we trade up once more for door number three. And when the crescendo is at its fullest, when we can’t hold our breath any longer, when our jittery nerves are about to burst, we open the door and our prize for wanting more, for refusing the facts, for thinking about now and not tomorrow--- is the largest oil spill disaster to hit the Gulf, America and the environment--- the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the murder of 11 people, and the callous and carefree BP inept follow up and follow through.

And instead of the big car, the diamond crusted necklace, the trip around the world, we receive the booby prize, an oil spill which keeps on giving and giving and taking and taking. And we all look bewildered and befuddled. How did this happen? How could this happen? We wanted what we were told we deserved. We were promised prizes!

Wonder how long this run of “Let’s Make A Deal will continue to play? Wonder if when they revive the show yeat again, they will ask the Devil to MC and add perhaps door number four.