I am not presumptuous enough to think that TeeVee is the one-stop online destination for this country's titans of industry -- obviously, titans of industry go to TV Tattle for their television fix -- but I do know that it's a pretty big World Wide Web out there. So the odds are fairly high, I think, that somehow, somewhere, someone out there reading our site is either in the employ of IBM or knows someone who is. And maybe, just maybe, that unknown someone can deliver a message to one of the higher-ups at Big Blue, a mover and/or shaker who knows where all the bodies are buried and can get things done with the snap of a finger. Sam Palmisano, say, or Lou Gerstner, or that machine that keeps whipping Garry Kasparov in chess.
And that message is: those IBM Linux commercials need to disappear from my television set. Now.
You must have seen the IBM Linux commercials. If not, you obviously aren't a dull, friendless loser like myself who watches too many televised sporting events. Just as a quick refresher, then, the IBM Linux commercials feature this creepy, expressionless, unblinking blonde kid. He's supposed to be Linux, I guess. What he actually is, I fear, is the face that's going to haunt my long after I'm planted in the ground.
The first IBM Linux spot aired a while back, with the creepy, expressionless, unblinking blonde kid sitting in a sterile lab and being tutored on every known subject in the world, as off-camera voices murmur with a mixture of awe and terror about how smart their horrible creation is becoming. Meanwhile, the creepy, expressionless, unblinking blonde kid just sits there as Muhammad Ali teaches him how to speak his mind, Penny Marshall gives him pointers on comedy, and John Wooden instructs him on the finer points of the box-and-one-defense. (To see the ad for yourself, go to this URL, click on the "The Future Is Open" link, and prepare to bid restful, nightmare-free sleep goodbye.
Subsequent ads have the kid -- still creepy, still expressionless, still unblinking, and still inexorably blonde -- out of the lab and out in the world. There he is on the Brooklyn Bridge! And in a museum! And in Communist China! And all the while, voice overs assert the creepy, expressionless, unblinking blonde kid's awesome and ever-expanding powers. Linux is open! Linux is growing! Linux is everywhere! Linux is bloodthirsty and vengeful! You cannot stop Linux! Please do not taunt Linux! Oh God, you've made him angry -- run!
I am not sure this is the message IBM wanted to convey.
So I beseech you, nameless IBM representative: please convey to your company that in these uncertain times, no one wants to flip on the television set and have the bejesus scared out of them by a commercial. Bad enough that my sporting-event viewing must be interrupted by ads where ING and Charles Schwab are telling me that my retirement nest egg is going to shrivel up and die or commercials where Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline insisting that, in a few years, my hoo-ha is going to do pretty much the same thing. I don't need IBM to remind me that in the not-too-distant future, every aspect of my life will be controlled by a creepy, expressionless, unblinking blonde kid. That's a view of the future so bleak and despairing, it would send Stanley Kubrick running home and crying to his mama. IBM's Linux ad campaign is horrifying. It's dispiriting. It's chilling.
Not nearly so chilling as the thought of young people learning all there is to know about comedy from Penny Marshall. But chilling nevertheless.
