I have to admit, I’m no great environmentalist. I’m a typical wasteful American, but I at least try to be aware of how wasteful I am. I avoid blatant acts of waste, and in true Midwestern Lutheran style, when I do waste I am overwhelmed with guilt, even if it doesn’t actually stop me from doing it.

But then I see something like I did today. My kids are watching Go, Diego, Go! and then on comes a commercial for Dixie paper plates. The overall message of the commercial is that if a mother really cares about her kids, she’ll use Dixie paper plates, pretty much for every meal, so that instead of spending time doing dishes, she can have “extraordinary moments” with her kids. I’ll try not to fall off my high horse here, but I think it’s shamefully irresponsible for Georgia-Pacific to promote this kind of egregiously wasteful behavior as both the duty and the desire of anyone aspiring to be a good parent.

Product placement is as old as TV itself, and if anything it’s less insidious now than it was in the early days of television. But it seems to be coming back in a big way, and while I’m over my initial offense at seeing my favorite shows turn into “advertainment,” I still find it incredibly distracting, even when it’s funny.

Case in point, in last night’s episode of The Office, Kevin got some rare screen time and proceeded to giddily demonstrate the awesome power of the company’s shredder. Note I called it a “shredder,” not a “paper shredder,” because as Kevin demonstrated, it can shred not only a fistful of paper at once, but also such surprising objects as CDs and (OK, this joke was a little too broad) credit cards.

Read more »