Do It Yourself? Always a disaster
SO THE LONG nightmare of no regulations of any kind is almost over. Maybe, finally, the FCC will report to work. Let's hope so, because there is a physical and financial danger lurking on the airwaves.
The message is "You Can Do This" and the vehicle is the 24-hour hypnotic cycle of home-improvement shows. For a little while it was craft shows, but these were aimed only at women, women who have wised up about crafting. They now know all crafts look like children made them unless they are made in China. Hmmm. Except Scrapbooking, which is an art, of course, not a craft.
Let's start with the first danger of these unregulated shows. They encourage men, men who are loved by their loved ones, to use the power tools they buy. Buying power tools is one thing. We accept it in marriage as a foible. Using them was not supposed to happen. So you sit in the next room while your beloved installs shelves between your wall studs, because the evil TV told him he could.
You hear the sound of a drill. It stops, sudden like. Then you hear "Oh, no." Then you hear fervent, whispered prayers.
Normally, this "You Can Do This" confidence is a good message. But the danger doesn't stop with power tools. These shows aren't happy with burning your house down, they want it to be as ugly as possible when it does. "Don't Be Afraid of Color," they exhort us.
In the hands of a good designer, color is a wonderful thing, even though they all live in white lofts. With confidence, I decided that the den "needs some color." I looked for "color inspiration from nature." I made sure to "break the rules of old-fashioned decorating." I dabbed, rolled, stippled. Three different colors for maximum impact. Maybe they told me to let each color dry before starting the next one so they wouldn't all just blend together, I don't remember.
I could have saved a lot of time and effort. I could have taken a baby, a nice big cereal- and veggie-eating 6-month-old, the kind with those gorgeous rolls of fat that invite you to feed him even more. I could have fed baby to bursting point, then just walked around the room, holding the baby near the wall. The colors would have turned out exactly the same.
Then there are the "No Sewing Needed!" curtains that fall down on the dog regularly, so he has started attacking them in one of the three ways dogs know how.
The "You Can Stencil" stage was worse. The color for the "Elegant Border, Just Like Molding!" starts at the ceiling and then blurs and drips its way down about a foot. It looks like somebody died upstairs on a "CSI" episode, one of the really bad ones.
Maybe it's a conspiracy. Real painters know that we'll have to hire them to fix this mess, so they pay for these shows to be on TV. Carpenters watch with glee, knowing those shelves are going to fall down. Landscapers can't wait for summer, when you find out that the plants on that show grow only in California, and in your yard they'll die a quick but painful death. Handy men and women across the land will tell you someone else is in on it too: emergency room doctors.
We'll probably find out that these shows are protected by the First Amendment or something. So, please, FCC, at least make them put a big fat warning message scrolling across the screen: Don't Try This At Home.
Monique Doyle Spencer is author of "How Can I Help? Everyday Ways to Help Your Loved Ones Live With Cancer." 