LEND ME YOUR EAR: ACADEMY AWARDS FOR INFOMERCIALS? WITH APOLOGIES TO ZIGGY

"Infomercials are about selling," a cable spokesman announced one recent evening." And selling is what America is all about."

I had just tuned in on CNN in the hope of seeing something other than infomercial. What appeared on the screen was a fat shapeless female performing vulgar gyrations for a cosmetics firm while yelling, "Shake that body! Shake that body!" Shake that body while applying lipstick, and watch that product make for your nose. What are you sniffing today?

This was a minimercial. Infomercials last longer. A new one for a jetstream oven takes 30 minutes. The oven occupies less space than your largest burner, but does the work of eight appliances and tosses in a video showing how to use it. It bakes bread in only a few minutes, a turkey in less than two hours. How to squeeze the turkey into the allotted space is your problem. The real turkey may be the oven.

Another 30-minute infomercial sells a product for growing hair, or the look of hair, to cover bald spots. It makes men and women look younger, and gives them self-confidence. Everyone needs self-confidence when applying for a job but few men or women are interviewed from the rear, barring models selling sex.

ANYTHING BUT BASIC headlines a minimercial featuring a model wearing a dress that covers even less than Vanna White's slips worn as evening attire. "Anything but basic" seems to describe half of what is made to sell, the aim being to denigrate civilization. Ugly replaces beauty and truth, with toy stores pushing wild blue-haired Teenage Trolls and Magic Potty Babies added to Cabbage Patch re-runs. The New Yorker shows leather bathing suits and organza cover-up jackets appliqued with bands of crocodile. Bugs have always been popular items in jewelry, but bugs with human faces? Tiffany "bee jewels" the rich and famous (or just rich) with bees resembling people. How devastating for animal-rights crazies! I've worn a luminous heart-shaped pendant make of butterfly wings for years, but if extremists discover where the color and glitter come from, I may be run out of town!

New York City's Whitney Museum of American Art is currently exhibiting more than 90 paintings by the late Jean-Michel Basquiat, who according to critics died of drugs at 27 and never learned to draw. "He just scribbled and jotted," one commentator pointed out. Why an exhibition devoted to trash? Is the art world this desperate for someone deserving of recognition?

Whittle Communications, in which 10,000 schools are enrolled, failed in their efforts to educate through cable until their infomercials were turned into edutainment. Master reporters address the young people with, "Hey there!", and explain, "Here's the deal." One master linguist asked a high school classmate of Bill Clinton's, "Was he cool, or a nerd?" Anything but basic is the way to learn.

Calvin Trillin, a top-flight writer trying to buck the trend, tells of a recent visit to England where a publication, in its American coverage, refers to MTV as "the gormless pop video channel." Trillin learned that the word "gormless" means "lacking discernment of thought." His daughter, he added, would call this "ditz-brained."

IBM now has an infomercial introducing a series of computer tools beginning with Think Pad a keyboard with a numeric keypad built in, in color, with 64 shades of gray "for expressing complex ideas." Poor Aristotle! Poor Einstein!

A recent article in Time Magazine is titled "Can anybody work this thing?" The illustration shows a box-shaped face with a computer for a nose. The article is about inventors coming up with new gadgets in the hope of "curing VCR illiteracy," and no one understands how to operate them. Not even Tipper Gore has figured out how the latest of these marvels works.

Take heart, Ziggy. Tipper might try to upstage her friend Hillary through one of those automatic telemachines that lets her bake cookies in the car. Trouble is, Tipper wouldn't get to deliver her chocolate chips through the car window as she passes by the White House on her way to work. The cookies stay at home while they bake.

This thought gives me hope for the future of our country and just think. I thought it up without a Think Pad or a Help Pad to shade my thought. Academy Awards for infomercials? No way!