I’m guessing that if you watch much TV you’ve seen them by now, the E*trade commercials with the talking baby.  When I first saw it, I, like many people, thought it was kind of funny; ah look at that, a baby in adult situations, it’s funny because it couldn’t happen.  As E*trade has continued to hang its marketing hat on this pudgy cheeked kid though, I’ve started to realize something:  That baby is a dick.  Seriously, have you seen them recently?  In one he’s hammering a golf partner because the duffer went broke during the economic downturn.  He’s laughing at his black baby friend with a crowd of other asshole babies because the black baby still has a stock broker (I’d even call that racist if I lived in Berkeley, but I don’t so I won’t).  In another commercial he gets a booty call and tells her to hold on until he gets what is apparently a provocative picture message.  (By the way, is that a provocative picture message of another girl baby or a grown woman sending one to a baby.  Either way it is a little disturbing, kind of like when Brian on Family Guy has sex with human women, because, you know, he’s a dog).  The problem is that this baby essentially represents the worst of consumer society, the self absorbed alfa-male who feels like he’s a winner because everyone else is a loser, and we’re supposed to think it’s funny because it’s a baby.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a killjoy who can’t take a joke, I mean the idea of using the baby with the deadpan adult voice is kind of funny, but E*trade is essentially using this gimmick to represent the person that they think we should want to be.  We should want to be winners right? Well hell, we better march off to our computers and sign up for E*trade.  But I don’t want to be that baby.  I’ve met that baby, in adult form, and I couldn’t stand him.  I’ve also met the female version and I couldn’t stand her.  This is the type of guy who doesn’t really have friends, because the people who are his “friends” he’d sell down the river without a second thought.  This is the kind of guy who drives a really nice car and treats you like a failure if you don’t, as if the niceness of your car validates your worth in society.  This is the guy with the eagle eye for spotting weakness in another person, bad golf game, using a stockbroker, and then teases him mercilessly about it in the presence of others to make himself look better.  He’s the type of guy who’d actually say the line, “because I’m a winner and you’re not.”  You see my point?  This baby really is a dick.

Being that it’s just a stupid commercial, the knee jerk reaction is that I shouldn’t care.  But E*trade is selling something here, they’re selling, essentially, a lifestyle.  They want you to buy into this lifestyle, thinking all the while that they are an integral part of it, so that you also buy into them.  It’s pretty basic marketing and only really slides into the realm of sinister when the lifestyle they are selling is a shoddy one.  Not only is this baby’s lifestyle shoddy, it is also grossly out of date.  This baby is straight out of 1997.  Or maybe 1986.  This baby is Gordan Gekko.  Remember those heady days when you could actually make money from day trading?  How does E*trade think that this is a valid model to sell when so many people have lost so much money acting like this baby? Basically what E*trade is saying is that if you use our service, you can be just like a Goldman Sachs dynamo, which is horse shit.  First of all, if you want to be like a GS dynamo, you value only money in this life, which makes you shallow.  Second, if you think those “analytics” offered by E*trade can make you money like Goldman Sachs’ casino style back door financial shenanigans then I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.  E*trade isn’t just marketing a bad lifestyle, they’re lying about the quality of a lifestyle and then lying about their ability to give it to you.  It’s a twofer.  This baby is downright sinister.

The irony is that the people out there like this baby are some of the unhappiest people you will ever meet.  They are the type of guys that high five way too much and have Halloween parties with the hottest girls but who know deep down that it’s all a sham.  You’d think that with all that’s happened recently people would realize that a greedy and shallow lifestyle is a hopeless one and would rise up in revolt against this a-hole baby.  I don’t know, maybe I just prefer my investment advice from Jack McCoy, I mean he’s the New York City D.A. for crying out loud.  Or those vaguely cartoon people which are a total rip off of Linklater’s Waking Life.  Either way, every time that damn baby comes on my TV spouting his cocky BS I just want to punch him in the face.  That’s right E*trade, you make me want to punch babies.