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Ah, Youth: What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up? Filthy Rich!
As the World Series draws near, do America’s kids daydream about hitting the decisive home run? Ha! They’re as likely to muse about the money they could make if they owned the TV rights. So one gathers from a Roper Youth Report survey conducted among kids age 6-17. Asked to pick from a menu of aspirations, 55 percent said they’d like to be rich, while 44 percent opted for “being smarter,” 41 percent cited fame and 40 percent said they’d like to be great athletes. Teenagers were more likely than younger respondents to yearn for wealth, with 61 percent of the 13-17 cohort making that choice. Even among the 6- and 7-year-olds, though, 42 percent said they’d like to be rich. Does this mean kids love money in the abstract or are there so many treats they covet that being rich is a prerequisite for happiness? The survey doesn’t say, but either explanation would be jarring. The younger kids have more exalted ambitions than the teenagers, with 31 percent of the former wishing to be great artists, musicians or writers, while 24 percent of teenagers expressed that aspiration. On the gender front, boys were far more likely than girls (54 percent versus 25 percent) to dream of being great athletes. Neither boys nor girls were all that keen on being president, with just 13 percent of the former and 9 percent of the latter citing that ambition.

Getting Better: Men, Heal Thyselves
Can it be that American men are finally growing up? Consider this info-nugget from a Hearst Magazines survey on men and healthcare: 95 percent of men now make their own appointments when it’s time to go to the doctor. (Before you know it, they’ll be putting on their own galoshes when they go out on a rainy day.) Indeed, the survey rebuts the idea that men are passive at best when it comes to their own healthcare. By their own account, anyway, 78 percent of the men are more involved in their own healthcare decisions than they were five years ago. And 72 percent say it’s up to them to research ailments and treatments instead of merely following a doctor’s instructions. Along those lines, 84 percent claim they “work together with their doctor” to decide on a course of medical action. Asked which maladies they’re most worried about, respondents picked cancer (79 percent) and heart disease (78 percent).

Paging Alan Greenspan: Adding Up Adweek’s Classified Ads For Jobs
After nine months of vertiginous ups and downs, the market for jobs in advertising, marketing and media is flat as a pancake compared to last year’s, judging by the volume of help-wanted classified ads in Adweek. On the other hand, optimists can read the September data as an uptick from the previous month’s general decline.

Leisure Lives: They’re Never Too Busy To Offer An Opinion
It’s always heartening to see online polls. Not the particulars of the results, mind you, but the fact that people had the time to put in their digital two cents. In so doing, they offer a living rebuttal to the notion that everybody is frantically pressed for time. CNN Interactive had no trouble pulling in 20,000 votes in the space of a few hours on the question of whether people would volunteer to test a promising new drug for the common cold (a slim majority said “no”). The previous week, nearly 2,000 held forth on whale-watching tours (most favor regulation). And 4,000-plus had time to opine on which show should host Monica Lewinsky’s TV debut (Oprah Winfrey left Ally McBeal far behind). However busy some of us may be, leisure has not been wiped off the face of the earth.

MIXED BLESSINGS: Lightweight Clients, Ice-Cold Showers, Etc.
Travel marketers are forever cranking out ads that show parents and their kids happily frolicking together at sunny destinations. People who’ve actually traveled with kids are left to wonder what picturesque planet is depicted in such photos. A reader poll by Travel & Leisure Family reflects a more down-to-earth outlook as it asks this question about the dynamics of family vacations: “How do you settle fights?”
Honors this week for Best Suspension (and We Mean Suspension) in a Bicycle Ad go to Cannondale for a photo that hangs five mountain bikes from the skies. The point is that the new aluminum frame is the lightest available for bikes of this sort. Thanks to the artful visual, that product benefit should come across even to a target audience whose brains get a thorough rattling each weekend. TDA of Longmont, Colo., created the ad.
The woman steps into the shower and turns it on. As the camera shows the water coming out of the shower head, the soundtrack plays the scary screech-screech-screech of violins. The woman lets loose a blood-curdling scream. A station promo for Psycho? So one might think. Instead, the action gives way to onscreen type that inquires: “Need a new water heater?” Created for Eastern Propane Gas by Filias Advertising of Portsmouth, N.H., the spot then makes a cut-rate offer on a Ruud water heater.
It may be the most frequently repeated mantra in public discussion of the Clinton-Lewinsky saga: Everyone has illicit affairs. If polls on the issue are to be believed, though, that’s not true. One recent rebuttal comes in the form of a reader survey by Latina magazine in which men were asked to divulge details of their sex lives. A clear majority of them (62 percent) said they haven’t cheated on their partner. Likewise, 72 percent said they’ve never had a one-night stand. One other intriguing bit of data: While 9 percent of the participants say they have had sex with a woman who is 10-15 years younger than they are, 19 percent say they’ve done the deed with a woman who is 10-15 years older.
There’s life and then there’s “life.” People who agitate against the death penalty usually emphasize its cruelty. Showing they aren’t such softies, an outfit called Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty focuses on the harshness of a life term. Bart Cleveland, a creative director at Sawyer Riley Compton in Atlanta, developed the pro bono campaign in tandem with copywriter Cathy Carlisi.

Bodies And Souls: Let’s Turn Off The TV And Check Our Cholesterol
For those who believe that movies and television exert a major influence on people’s lives, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll holds a surprise. The survey’s respondents rated the content of TV and movies below national politics as elements that have a “great effect” on their lives. Now there’s something to be thankful for.
The relative indifference to politics, meanwhile, helps explain the absence of outrage about their leaders’ sins. It’s not that Americans are so focused on politicians’ policy agendas that they’re forgiving of private peccadilloes. Rather, they seem not to care what their leaders do in private or in public. Focusing on their personal health and well-being, they’re no more outraged by misdeeds in Washington than they would be by an increase in postage rates in Outer Mongolia.
And while Americans may be mainly concerned about “the economy, stupid” in times of recession, the survey finds that they currently ascribe more importance to the moral climate of the country. Plenty of commentators say that prosperity (and the conspicuous consumption that goes with it) tends to corrupt people’s morals. But one might argue from the survey’s data that prosperity gives people the luxury of caring about their souls. Or perhaps it just gives them the luxury of fretting about the condition of everyone else’s soul. In either case, the importance respondents give to the country’s moral values suggests they’ll look askance at pop culture that casually ridicules conventional morality.

Olestraphobia: There Are Worse Things Than Honest-To-Nature Fat
What does it profit a man to avoid some calories if that means eating highly processed foods instead? Not much, according to the participants (mainly young and female) in an online poll conducted by FitnessLink. For example, 32 percent said they would refuse to eat any food made with Olestra. And 62 percent said they shun artificial sweeteners. Participants were asked whether they’d prefer an all-natural, full-fat cookie to a not-so-natural one that was free of fat. Almost half (47 percent) said they’d take the fatty treat even if the fat-free version tasted exactly the same. All in all, 60 percent believe “real” foods are healthier than processed and fat-free foods.