"Amish" space heaters? Really?

Yesterday's New York Times ran a story about the Heat Surge Roll-n-Glow Fireplaces, the advertising blitz of which is currently clogging the avenues of public discourse. These things are being pretty heavily advertised in Florida from crying out loud, I cannot imagine the onslaught in parts of the country where it actually gets cold.

I'm regularly stunned by the audacity of this particular advertiser's claims. Stunned. But equally if not more stunning is the fact that people fall for this nonsense. This is a space heater that's made in China like just about every other space heater on the market. You plug it into the wall and it warms up a room while using the same amount of juice that every other space heater does. So rather than just letting it be a space heater, this one's disguised as a fake fireplace. Isn't that a bad thing? A fake fireplace? Then the thing's advertised as being sold for free but somehow costs between $350 and $500. Is that not a warning sign for people? I swear, gutting education budgets for 30 years to better churn out unblinking and unthinking consumers seems to have worked.

This same manufacturer of overpriced space heaters then surrounds the whole hot mess with the supposed allure of the Amish. Now, I grew up surrounded by Amish people and Amish farms and they are indeed lovely people. However, they lead an 18th century existence. An existence complete with polio outbreaks, functional illiteracy, child labor, female subservience, poor hygiene and inbreeding. Yeah, that's exactly who I want making my space heater.

Think!