I grew up in a pretty strong Jewish area, which meant that I attended my fair share of bar and bat mitzvahs. A good many of these, as I recall, were conducted by none other than Rabbi Marc Gellman. On Long Island, where I grew up, Gellman is something of a minor celebrity - if not a very exciting one. He appeard on a local weekly show with a Catholic (I think) priest called “The God Squad.” They talked about faith and religion from a “multi-cultural perspective”. I put that in quotation marks, because it’s like discussing politics along only a Democratic/Republican axis. It’s ultimately somewhat shallow and ingrown, while pretending to be very wide-ranging.

Anyway, the other day I was reading an article on MSNBC called “Pimp My Faith” written by none other than my old friend, Rabbi Marc Gellman. The article was on a semi-interesting topic: about finding morally worthwhile television shows. The shows he ended up grabbing hold of for his tenuous arguments were none other than “Pimp My Ride” and “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” In praise of these bastions of Judeo-Christians values, he said:

What makes these two shows not just kind and weepy but actually luminous is the way they unselfconsciously obliterate the traditional ways we often treat the poor. First, both shows treat the needy without a hint of condescension or pity. They respect these people completely.

While I do like what he goes on to say about charity and giving people not only what they need, but what they dream, I’m personally not able to agree with his assertions about these shows. If I had to go over these shows and produce what I thought was their actual message, I would without a moment’s hesitation say that they promote materialist-fetishism. These shows aren’t humanitarian efforts to satisfy the needs of one lucky family or struggling young person. They are calculated efforts to teach people how to dream bigger, better, more expensive lifestyles, and to give them just enough training and technical knowledge so that they can go out and really start throwing money down the drain.

I remember a while back an acquaintance’s Italian girlfriend was visiting for a couple days. We were all watching tv, and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” was on. She’d never seen or heard about it before and asked him what this show was all about. And he said, “It’s to teach guys how to be materialistic.” While it’s perhaps a harsh assessment and doesn’t take into account the positive role it plays in breaking down gay/straight stereotypes, I believe it cuts to the show’s true purpose: to create and grow a new market for men’s beauty and fashion products. Some brilliant cosmetics conglomerate decided one day in a board room they wanted to translate the enormous beauty market which exists for women to men. They realized that in order to do so, they’d first have to re-engineer public opinion about men, vanity and heterosexuality. So they got this team of gay guys. Second, they realized that men don’t have the complex life-long indoctrination into the subject of beauty that women get from magazines, tv, peers, mothers, things like that. So they used these gay men to teach regular men how and what to buy. I mean, it’s fucking brilliant really.

And what does all that have to do with religion or spirituality? Nothing. Exactly. That’s the whole point I’m trying to make here. Sorry Rabbi, you put on some nice bar mitzvahs, but I just don’t buy what you’re selling.