Column one

My own little list

As some day it may happen that

a victim must be found,

I've got a little list--I've got

a little list

Of society offenders who might

well be underground,

And who never would be missed

--who never would be missed.

--Gilbert and Sullivan,

The Mikado

Telemarketers, as everybody but the telemarketers themselves might agree, are a decidedly expendable lot. But we're supposed to suffer them. Why? Because they just work there. They're just doing their job, which is to tie up your phone line, interrupt your morning, noon and evening, at breakfast, lunch and supper, and eat up your time--the stuff life's made of.

Ah, Progress! Now even life's intolerable pests have become automated, and telemarketers make robocalls. Whatever their latest up-to-date incarnation, the whole species is just as insufferable.

If I get one more robocall plugging French Hill, I thought during our interminable primary season, I'm voting for Ann Clemmer. And then I got a robocall plugging Ann Clemmer.

The other morning, after I thought the campaign was safely over, I got a robocall conceding defeat from Colonel Colonel, the third and last candidate in that race, the one with the unforgettable name/rank. For this I pay AT&T?

It's not as if anybody is forced to be a telemarketer, involuntary servitude having been technically illegal since the 13th Amendment. These people signed on to be nuisances and deserve to be brushed off as unceremoniously as any other pests. Though I tend to think more highly of mosquitoes and gnats, who are just following their nature.

Civility should be no bar to making it clear to even the most obtuse of these creatures called telemarketers that they're interrupting ("Excuse me while I tend to my dying mother . . .") and we'd like to get on with what's left of our lives. ASAP. And that we wish some other folks would get on with theirs--instead of practicing a socially reprehensible trade.

I don't know how they do it, but telemarketers have an uncanny ability to call at just the wrong time. Maybe it's because any time they call is just the wrong time.

There Really Oughta Be a Law against this kind of effrontery. And if there already is, it isn't working. Most of us did not buy phone service so we could be pestered to buy things. Although I have yet to hear of a robocall that described its purpose that honestly. They're usually Offering A Great Opportunity, or You've Won Something Valuable, or announcing that you Have Been Chosen From a Select List . . . In short, lucky you, you're one of the rare souls eligible to give these people your money.

Hearing that telltale pause before the fake-cheery, almost human voice comes on withoutanyspacesbetweenthewords, I always ask, just to make sure, once the connection is finally made: "Is this a telemarketer?" Only once did I get a halfway honest answer: "Yes, but . . ."

Usually the evasions are transparent: "No, I have an offer for you . . ." or "No, I'm going to give you something . . ." and variations thereof. What these people--and I use the term advisedly--seem unable to offer is a clear answer and a modicum of privacy. I always tell them to take me off their hit list (if they don't hang up before I can get the words out of my mouth) but they keep calling.

I have yet to resort to quoting the caption of a favorite cartoon from the New Yorker: "I don't have time to talk about this right now. Can't it wait until we're dead?" But I'm tempted. Death tends to clarify one's priorities; even the thought of it does.

But these people--or their machines--can't take a hint. A distinguished alum of the Democrat-Gazette's editorial page, Tucker Carlson, told me about the telemarketer who called offering "free" dance lessons. "I'm a legless amputee," Tucker replied. (He's incorrigible.) "In that case," said the unabashed voice on the other end of the line, "you must know someone who would like to learn the tango, the waltz, the . . ."

Nobody wants to keep some little old lady from selling Christmas candy to folks she's known for years, or prevent commercial calls from salesmen to businesses, but telemarketers in general have become a ringing plague. They far outrank termites, a species that can be controlled. These people can't be.

The bond daddies and cold-callers selling stocks may be the worst. ("Believe me when I tell you, believe me, I think before your check even hits the bank, you'll be up in profits in this one. . . . Warren Buffett is buying; this is the next Wal-Mart ... You have no idea what you're tapping into today . . .")

On the whole you'd be better off doing something more constructive, like watching grass grow. At least that's restful. Instead of irritating.

Surely our legal adepts can frame language that would let the church ladies and PTAs do their thing over the phone while giving the rest of us some peace.

And if new legislation can't help, then the unwritten law may be able to accomplish what statutes and ordinances cannot: Simply make it clear that ladies and gentlemen do not become telemarketers. Put them in the same detestable class as drug dealers.

Make it part of the folk wisdom of country music lyrics: "Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be telemarketers . . ." Make the whole class as odious in popular folklore as lawyers, as politicians, even as . . . journalists. The Victorians knew how to do it. What they could not outlaw, they snubbed. They made it clear that some things decent people simply do not do. Like bothering perfect strangers.

One more unwelcome ring and, well, there is such a thing as justifiable homicide. What jury in America would convict? ("Your Honor, this was the eighth call my poor client had received that day from someone with only a first name offering him a revolutionary new . . . .")

The Lord High Executioner in The Mikado would understand the problem. And he had a solution: "I am happy to think that there will be no difficulty in finding plenty of people whose loss will be a distinct gain to society at large."

The best part about Alexander Graham Bell's little invention is breaking the connection, but it won't be perfected till it can eliminate some callers entirely. Entirely. And I have a little list . . . .

Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. E-mail him at:

[email protected]

Editorial on 06/08/2014

Upcoming Events