This reader letter -- and others like it -- to Vanity Fair’s editors piqued my interest to look for the original article:

IN “Lazy-Ass Nation” (October), Jim Windolf managed to take a serious subject, the fact that Americans are woefully inactive and alarmingly obese, and water it down with examples that were often not only ill-informed but downright mean. Yes, the Clapper may seem to encourage laziness, but I do seem to remember those early commercials for the product showing an elderly woman clapping the lights off from her bed. And attacking cup holders? For crying out loud, it seems to me that these convenient devices actually encourage the questionable but unlazy practice of multitasking. The holders allow a person to drink coffee while driving to work, where they will no doubt perform several tasks at the same time all day.

JIM ROMANOFF
South Burlington, Vermont

I located the original article and Jim would hate me because I could not stop laughing. Sure, the “Americans-are-lazy” trend story is overdone. But Windolf managed to do it with a fresh set of eyes.

And best of all, the different technologies he mentioned, like the electronic fork twirler (for spaghetti) and the motorized ice cream cone -- I really wish these were joke items and not serious patented inventions! -- were hilarious:

Could it be that our increasing willingness to get through life in a nearly comatose state has kept us physiologically stagnant? Catering to this tendency, the Motorized Ice Cream Cone, a device invented in 1999 by Rick Hartman of Seattle, rotates a scoop at the pleasant speed of 15 revolutions per minute. Press the button, stick out your tongue, and the automatic cone does the rest. Who knew licking was such a chore? Asked if his invention would make children lazier than they already are, Hartman says, "I don't think so. I think that eating ice cream is genetically encoded in the human tongue, and so I think that we, as a species, have that fairly well under control."

I wouldn't be so sure. Meeting our desires through the products they turn out, various corporations seem to sense an American craving for an almost total passivity. Since 2002, Pfizer has peddled Listerine Cool Mint Breath Strips, which melt into nonexistence upon meeting the flat of your tongue, as an improvement on lozenges. Chloraseptic, too, has introduced its own dissolving strips. As Ellen DeGeneres asked in a recent routine, "Can we not suck anymore?"

The gold standard of dubious laborsaving devices is the Clapper, from Joseph Enterprises, in San Francisco. Since 1982, Clapper owners have been able to control their lights and appliances with a syncopated double clap of the hands. This fall, the company is launching the Clapper Plus. With its wireless remote, the new Clapper is a Clapper for people who can't even be bothered to clap. In its review of the product, even the technophilic Web site Gizmodo.com was moved to remark, "WTF?"

I had the exact same question, so I called up Clapper Plus inventor Mark Grossmeyer of Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and asked him what was on his mind. "I was in bed one night," he tells me, "and I was thinking, Why aren't I using the Clapper in my house? And I was thinking, Well, my wife's sleeping next to me. If I start clapping right now to turn off my light, she'd probably hit me. So I basically said maybe it would be nice to have a remote switch. You push the button and it'll work from inside or outside your house. You can also clap if you're not by your remote at the time.”