I have never bought anything on any of the home shopping channels and I never will, but I find these programs mesmerizing. First, because they represent shopping in its purest and most American form; these channels are shopping porn. But beyond that, I salute the hosts on these shows, because they are never allowed to stop talking, for hours at a stretch, because a second of dead air might allow a viewer to realize that maybe she doesn’t really need that hand-tooled western-style shoulderbag air-brushed with butterflies and zebras.
The hosts therefore can become giddy and desperate, as they struggle to find one more way of describing a space heater disguised to look like a flickering fireplace, or Waterford candleholders in the shape of seahorses. Sometimes I wait for a host to exclaim, “My cousin had polio, but after she purchased this piece of abstract wrought-iron wall art, at our one-time-only low, low price, well, the next day she was out in the yard playing touch football!”
One of my favorite moments occured deep into a segment offering what is always referred to, maybe for legal reasons, as “Tiffany-style lighting.” The hosts encourage shoppers to fill their homes with colorful lamps, sconces, chandeliers and ceiling fans, and they always mention that, “This piece is created from over 876 individual pieces of stained glass. Can you imagine?”
The host that day was a heartfelt guy, and I don’t know for sure if he was gay, but he was a home shopping host in a red turtleneck sweater selling Tiffany-style lamps. He was insisting that these lamps are perfect for any home, and he said that both of his brothers owned Tiffany-style lamps, and that the brothers were all very different. “My younger brother is a math wiz,” he said, “even when he was a baby, he could solve any problem lickety-split, and today he’s a math professor at a major university. And my older brother was an athlete, he was the star quarterback on his high school and college teams, and he even played a few seasons of pro football. And as for me, well..”
He took a long, almost tearful pause, as his mind considered every possible choice of words. Finally he finished his thought:
“And as for me, well…I was…creative and emotional.”
At that moment I loved that host so much that I almost bought a lamp.
