Seeing things from a distance

Remember the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, with everyone speaking different languages and people not understanding each other? That's what it's like today. I don't like to get political in this column, and I'll try to stay away from that obvious concern.

But there seems to be more meanness everywhere. On television, we see the car insurance commercial with the character Mayhem, face full of bandages, running people down and laughing about it. He even runs down crafters at an outdoor fair, which is particularly painful to me. This is really tasteless considering what happened at the German craft market in December, and then what occurred in New Orleans on New Year's Eve.

I even called the insurance company (not my own, by the way) and complained to someone offshore. It really is like the Tower of Babel speaking to some companies these days. I thought maybe Mayhem was off the air, but I saw him on again last night.

Then there’s the commercial where people are throwing newspapers back at the old-fashioned newspaper delivery boy riding a bicycle. A woman in a white bathrobe hits him, among others throwing papers and yelling, with one guy hitting the spokes of his bicycle and throwing him down. This is appropriately a commercial for Sling news. The bicyclist would likely end up in a sling after papers being slung at him.

My favorite commercial is Progressive's series on young homeowners in fear of becoming their parents. There's little chance of that happening today. My father passed away in 1970, and my mother died on the brink of the computer age. She used to complain about dot.com, dot.com.

I'm a not-any-better Luddite. Sit in any airport (if you're not worried about an accident) and look at the people in gray hoodies scrolling on their devices. One book I read calls them "The Indigos," dressed in unisex clothing. It's not what you wear, but what you know these days.

How about the commercial for TaxSlayer? Who is watching us? We seek out aliens with boy toy rockets being sent up by tech billionaires. Maybe we won't like what we find, or they might not like us. Maybe they want to send us to Mars, or they should be sent to Mars! Maybe they'll want to print a Pizza Hut commercial on the moon to ruin its beautiful mystery.

But maybe we're being watched from a distance. And that reminds me of a well-known song written by Julie Lord, and the lyrics that speak of hope:

“From a distance there is harmony

And it echoes through the land.

It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace,

It's the voice of every man.”