They proved that this could be turned into that in the minds of millions of Americans in the blink of an eye merely to sell more of a product that kills its consumers. Doesn't matter. Content simply does not matter. Image is everything.
If they could so deftly shape masculine and feminine expression in the name of a duplicitous and deadly commerce why couldn't they also have the ability to reshape these things to suit a revolutionary aim to destroy a cohesive society?
If we could stop seeing these issues as liberal vs. conservative and red state vs. blue state and instead see the manipulation as the blatant and cheap marketing scam that it is, perhaps we can save this culture.
The USA Network had a show in the amazing early days of cable called Night Flight that was a potpourri of rock and roll, B-movies and other assorted oddities. As part of its programming, it ran a Los Angeles local cable show called New Wave Theater that was dedicated to the growing independent music scene in L.A. in the early 1980s.
The host, Peter Ivers, was best friends with the creator of Animal House and stars like John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. He was murdered in 1983 and the case was never solved, although the director of New Wave Theater is apparently a top suspect:
Although the mystery of Ivers’ death isn't solved as such his NWT partner David Jove is fingered as far and away the most likely suspect for his murder. The most startling aspect of this is the revelation that the ”megalomaniac bully” David Jove was also apparently David Schneiderman aka "The Acid King", a character who features prominently in British 60s counter-culture chronicles as the shadowy figure who infamously supplied the drugs at the Redlands bust and then conveniently disappeared when Jagger and Richards were arrested, amid dark suggestions later on that the whole thing was a set-up engineered by Schneiderman/Jove.
This episode of New Wave Theater was made in the wake of his murder. Interesting to think that his murderer may have made the show. While there is a ghoulish fascination with this particular episode, what is more intriguing is getting to watch a show with such individual character from back in the day after scrolling through all the scripted "reality" crap on TV today that is totally devoid of real personality, real people and real opinions.
It's simply amazing how corporations have literally banned individual identity from our television sets because they see it as a barrier to increased profits.
And yes, if you watch the Honda Scooters ad featuring an absurdly young Adam Ant being devoured by Grace Jones at the 12:06 mark of the youtube video you can see the corporate behemoth taking aim at the New Wavers.
But of course this is in perfect keeping with the cycle of artistry in modern capitalist America:
First, something is good and makes no money. Then it is good and makes a bit of money. Then it is making money but still sort of good. Then it is making big money and who cares if it's any good. Then it's about making as much money as possible and it totally sucks.
Which makes the following video from 1977 even more interesting:
A couple of points:
a. In attacking the burgeoning punk rock fad, I love how aging promoter Bill Graham immediately throws the Nazi card at something he personally isn't profiting from (6:04 mark). He comes across as a guy who made a ton of loot in the '60s and can't figure out how to keep the money train rolling in the post-Watergate '70s. He really has nothing to offer to the conversation at all but he's there because he wants to co-opt something he doesn't remotely understand.
b. You can see that Kim Fowley is every bit as business oriented as Graham yet truly understands what is happening. His dismissal of punk rock at the 8:48 mark as self-limiting and trendy was dead-on. You can tell Fowley, back in 1977, can clearly foresee the rise of bands like New Order and the whole "college rock" or "alternative rock" movement of the 1980s: smart, melodic and power-catchy music. Sharp eye, Mr. Fowley.
This is in theory how capitalism is meant to operate. The street-smart guy with his pulse on what is really happening getting ahead of the curve and profiting from his knowledge. One can see how this would benefit and boost cultural innovation. Alas, in terms of culture today, it is clear that this playing field no longer exists in even the slightest way.
Giant corporations dominate our television networks, our movie makers and our music companies. Giant corporations do not look to nurture and develop the next big thing. They are not seriously trying to get ahead of the curve. Rather, they look to co-opt and profit off of whatever they can for as long as they can.
Our cycle of artistry is stuck in endgame overdrive. The main goal is to find something that will make as much money as possible without any concern for quality whatsoever.
Our cultural decision-makers today are all aging Bill Grahams trying to hold onto their moneymakers. The savvy Kim Fowleys are prevented from nurturing something new and the result is the American public is fed a tasteless gruel of safe, dull and predictable fare. That it is increasingly sexually explicit and scatological only reinforces the artistic bankruptcy of it all.
"Show me an artist and forget the trend," Kim Fowley says, quoting legendary music executive Clive Davis.
We have no artists today for our corporate cultural oligarchs are only interested in maximizing the trend.
Here's another distasteful (pun intended) slice of evidence of the corporate promotion of "women's liberation" during its formative years. The oversized companies that profit from selling cheap, nutritionally-worthless "food" were openly encouraging and promoting working mothers back in 1981, just as they were really starting to hit the mainstream.
Why?
It certainly had nothing to do with "fulfilling" women.
It had everything to do with increasing profits.
The makers of this horrific dreck (Ever try one? Like eating a tennis ball covered in ketchup. LOTS and LOTS of ketchup.) were willing to destroy an entire nation's future health just to increase their 1981 sales.... and they did.
This ad aired one year after the makers of Steakumm were bought out by food processing giant Heinz. Heinz paid handsomely for the Steakumm brand and wasted no time in honing in on the perfect target for its junk product... the emerging majority ("over 50 percent") of working women, many of them mothers.
[I]n a trademark-infringement suit [in 2012] that pitted Steak-umms owners against a South Philly cheesesteak and pizza shop named Steak 'Em Up, the ugly truth of the mass-produced sandwich steak was revealed. And the details are pretty bleak.
In courtroom proceedings, the composition of the meat came to light. The [Philadelphia] Daily News reports that the stuff is:
[C]hopped and formed emulsified meat product that is comprised of beef trimmings left over after an animal is slaughtered and all of the primary cuts, such as tenderloin, filet, and rib eye, are removed ... The emulsified meat is pressed into a loaf and sliced, frozen and packaged.
Yum!
Amoral capitalism truly is every bit as evil as communism.
One look at the health profile of the typical American adult today, most of whom were raised on fake corporate garbage such as this, should be all that is needed to drive that message home. Processed foods have wreaked havoc on the vitality of this nation's citizenry.
Any honest appraisal of the modern feminist movement must conclude that its most meaningful "achievement" by far was cementing the dominance of toxic corporate food items in the American kitchen.
Here's one feminist smart (or honest?) enough to put 2 and 2 together yet still unwilling to admit what she in fact knows... that it adds up to 4:
So here’s the conundrum. Processed foods are bad for us. But there’s also something that seems, well, liberating about them . Easy-to-prepare processed foods free up some serious time on the domestic front. And less time in the kitchen means more time for people—and especially women, who still do most of the cooking—to accomplish other things in their lives.
So are processed foods feminist?
I am certainly unwilling to answer yes to this question in an unequivocal way. Processed foods weren’t created for the purpose of liberating women from their stifling domestic duties. They were created by corporations for the purpose of making money—and those same corporations certainly didn’t want the lucrative market of homemakers to leave the domestic front. But nonetheless, processed foods have contributed to the liberation of women from compulsory domestic duties.
Large, exploitative companies like Heinz knew over 30 years ago that stay-at-home mothers from intact families who have time to cook real meals were bad for their mass-produced business. They happen to be great for the nutritional health of the children they raise, but that doesn't up the stock price for MegaFood, Inc., does it?
Ah, to hell with the kids, Heinz had 1981 revenue projections to meet.
We are all paying the price now.
Oh, and... using little Ralphie from "A Christmas Story" as a pawn in their evil game? That really hurts.
10 years ago, on July 1, 2003, I went through one of the more jarring personal experiences with our new society imaginable. Arrested at a Baltimore Orioles baseball game because of a ridiculously overzealous usher and a warped and spiteful police officer, I was escorted in handcuffs via paddy wagon to a true hellhole known as Baltimore Central Lockup, where I got to experience... well, I'll let the story speak for itself:
Eventually morning came and still nothing, no word on when I would get out or anything. And after sleeping and eating and even more waiting and waiting, the cellblock started to get more agitated and lively. And that's when the threats came. It didn't exactly come as a shock that skinny white guys like me are going to get threatened in jail, but it did shock me that as much as 20 minutes could go by without a guard so much as walking past my cell. And so what do you do when, after having overheard hours of casual conversation about stabbings and beating people over the head with baseball bats, etc., etc., you're told by a group of men, all of whom are bigger and stronger than you, that they are going to rape you in one hour? Maybe they were just trying to frighten me, who knows, but you know what, who cares? It's still gonna scare the living hell out of you and it was just such a bizarre, surreal experience to be standing there powerless, knowing that I could easily - easily - have my life literally destroyed at any time. It just didn't seem real to me, which looking back I have to say was a good thing. In between Our Fathers and Hail Marys all I could really think was "What's the score man? What's the score?" as these guys kept telling me crudely and pointedly that they were going to assault me in one hour.
Sentenced to community service, I made a promise to myself as I labored within eyesight of Camden Yards, home of the Orioles:
So on a very pleasant Tuesday in September, 2003 I reported to a community services center in the Pigtowne section of Baltimore to complete my rehabilitation. Three other community service peons joined me, and we were assigned the task of mowing, raking and cleaning up three small vacant lots near the center. It was really all too perfect. The location turned out to be just a couple of blocks from Camden Yards, and I could see the light stantions from Oriole Park as I did the work.
And so as I was bagging grass cuttings in a urine-stenched lot while staring at the twinkling spires of one of Bud Selig's golden palaces of greed, I could only think how this was such a fitting farewell to Major League Baseball and the incompetent fools who have driven yet another fan away forever. What's the score, Bud? What's the score?
And here we are 10 years later and what has changed? The foreboding direction I could clearly see stadium security hurtling towards in 2003 has gotten worse and worse over the years. Observe this example of a fan arrest at an Arizona Cardinals football game. Not much to see as to the actual arrest but note the dire warning on the scoreboard encouraging fans to report each other to authorities:
(0:08 mark)
So glad to see that the Soviet-era neighbor-watching-neighbor model is still thriving at major sporting events. I personally noticed it for the first time at that Orioles game back in '03. Up to that point, I had never seen messages like that on a scoreboard at a game.
But wait... there's more! Seattle Seahawks fans can look forward to an experience more in line with the TSA than the traditional sports usher as they enter the stadium for the NFL team's games this season. Check out this story from last month:
On Friday, CenturyLink Field emailed season-ticket holders information about the new rules, which were announced by the Seahawks and 31 other NFL teams Thursday to make security searches quicker and easier.
Fans are encouraged to leave all bags at home. If that doesn’t work for them, fans can bring one clear plastic bag (the Ziploc freezer variety, for example) or a clear tote sized 12 inches by 6 inches by 12 inches, in addition to a purse small enough to fit in your hand — a so-called clutch.
Any other kind of large bag is forbidden, including larger purses, coolers, fanny packs, cinch bags, diaper bags, laptop bags and large camera bags. Season-ticket holders will receive an appropriately sized clear vinyl bag for free.
Seat cushions are also banned because they could conceal an explosive device, the NFL said. Signs and banners must be standard letter-sized or smaller, at 8.5 by 11 inches.
And baseball hasn't changed a single bit. How about the out-of-town fan arrested in Washington, D.C. at a Nationals game for trying to get rid of tickets for face value or less for a game he would not be in town for?
The officer wanted to know what I was asking. Not wanting to be labeled a scalper, I said, “Love to get face value.” These words started a Kafka-esque journey into the D.C. criminal justice system.
Told to stand against a wall, I was informed that I was under arrest for “solicitation.” I explained that I was from out of town and that I was not trying to “scalp,” and I apologized for not knowing that what I was doing was a crime. As the officer ran a check on my Minnesota driver’s license, I wondered how bad the ticket would be.
The officer came back and told the trainee to call for transport.
“You going to do this?” the trainee asked, somewhat incredulously.
“Absolutely.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.
“Does it look like I’m kidding?” the officer replied. Things went downhill from there.
The original article that I wrote back in 2004 garnered a good amount of reader responses, even though there was no comments section to post on. These readers all emailed their comments. From across the country fans and citizens decried the eroding of freedoms we all used to take for granted only a few years earlier. I saved one letter from a commenter who wrote:
I do not go to "events" anymore, ever. No sports, no concerts, no picnics, no Disneyland, no nothing. It's not worth it. I'm boycotting all of society because it sucks. The scumbags have taken over, and only by completely rejecting them and their bull will decent normal people ever have a chance just to live free ever again.
I urge you boycott society, also, and tell everyone why. If you don't, then you are part of the problem, considering the Truth you discovered by direct personal experience.
Well, it's been 10 years without Major League Baseball and I can't say it's been much of a sacrifice. In fact, I've barely noticed it. I have attended a few hockey, basketball and football games that I got free tickets from somebody for and without exception the experience was awful. All this security crap combined with the bombardment of nonstop advertising and artificial bells and whistles makes for a truly terrible live experience. I have written on this elsewhere.
It saddens to me to say that I must agree with that letter writer who doesn't go to "events" anymore. It's not only a political statement on my part, though there is some of that in the decision. Mostly it's that I feel like a sap for feeding at this corrupt corporate trough. Quite simply, almost everything that passes for an "event" in our modern decaying society today is just not worth doing.
I can honestly say that I don't feel I am missing out on anything. Except the possibility of being gang raped in an inner city prison, of course.
Corporate sports are setting us up for the corporate police state. Turn away and don't look back. Believe me, sports fans, it's a lot easier than you think.
Current industrial farming practices rely heavily on grain. Under current US agriculture policy, the government provides substantial subsidies to farmers who produce grains, particularly corn and soybeans. Livestock producers often use corn and soy as a base for their animal feed because these protein-rich grains help bring animals to market weight faster, and because they are cheaper than other feed options as a result of government subsidies. It has been estimated that the operating costs of factory farms would be 7-10% higher without these subsidies. As a result, a large percentage of grains grown in the US are used in animal feed, with 47% of soy and 60% of corn produced in the US being consumed by livestock.
Government welfare? Yes. Cheaper? Yes. Better? A resounding NO:
The overreliance on grain-based animal feeds in industrial food animal production has negative consequences for animal health, the environment, and even human health. Considering the natural eating habits of livestock animals when formulating animal feeds would be beneficial to both animals and consumers, and will result in healthier herds and flocks, less reliance on antibiotics to control disease, as well as a lower chance of introducing certain pathogens into society via contaminated meat.
In short, you get what you pay for. The notion that something is cheap for the consumers' benefit is the number one thing that has to be stamped out of modern American brains. Mass-produced goods such as what passes for modern food are cheap for the benefit of massive multinational corporations. Period.
If it was more profitable for them to sell a quality product at a quality price, they would do so. It is not. In this Potemkin mirage of convenience and plenty, the money is made by selling cheap garbage at a small markup over and over and over again.
You pay $3 for a crappy gallon of filth that costs them 20 cents to produce. I pay $5 for a quality gallon of pure, nutrient-dense, real milk from healthy, pastured cows. The larger price is factored in from the cost of maintaining the land, keeping the cows healthy and happy and all the other little things that make for the superior living food product I immensely enjoy with every glorious glass of joy.
In the past I never felt the remotest need to give thanks to God for my store-bought milk. The idea seemed silly. I truly in my heart thank God for the life-giving bounty that nourishes me now.
Pay more for real food and pay less for your pointless distractions, such as the wasteland that is cable television today. You need food to live. You don't need reality television at all.
This article from across the pond is frightening and revealing...
Homes in Britain are becoming the smallest in Europe with new one-bed flats now typically no bigger than a Tube carriage.
Faced with rising land costs, developers are cramming a lounge, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom into as little as 495 square feet.
The result is ‘cramped, dark and artificially lit’ environments that put health and wellbeing at risk, the Royal Institute of Architects said.
With our corrupt politicians in the pockets of large, amoral corporations AND simultaneously seeking to expand the total influence of the federal goliath over us all, this is the future we have to look forward to.
There is a concerted effort to get citizens off the land and into the ever-growing megacities currently cropping up all over the U.S. I lived in Washington, D.C. for 25 years before moving away in October and one could see quite plainly how the city stretched out ever wider by the year, like a sponge absorbing more and more around it.
Today, the city of Washington is a vast swath of strip malls, townhouses and condos extending for miles without reprieve. One could drive from Warrenton, Va. north for about 12 miles, then east to the Beltway and north toward Frederick Md., a distance of roughly 78 miles in all. You could chart the continual growth of the Communist Bulgaria-era block housing over time. There would be gaps here and there, but you could see the blight pushing in to fill any remaining space with each passing year.
It is all very soulless, overcrowded and removed from the land. An artificial glow of streetlights and business lighting constantly smothers the beauty of night and the choking oppression of traffic and cookie-cutter concrete landscapes suffocate the natural light of day.
When the government provides everything they can stuff us into cages. There we will be far easier to control than if we were scattered amongst the countryside, like... oh, what's the word?.... like.... free people.
These mind-boggling images capture the scale of soaring apartment blocks in one of the world's most densely populated areas; Hong Kong.
As home to a population of more than seven million crammed into an area measuring just 424 square miles, space in Hong Kong is at a premium.
It means that, when it comes to providing accommodation for Hong Kong's huge population, the only way to go is up.
But fret not. Everybody gets his own box to call his own:
They are barely large enough for a single person to squeeze into at all, let alone swing a cat.
But incredibly these tiny 'coffin' apartments in central Tokyo still command rents of up to £400 a month.
The Japanese capital is one of the most crowded cities in the world, and to cash in on the chronic housing problem, landlords have developed what are known as 'geki-sema' or share houses.
If you want to avoid this definition of Hell, fight against the illegal invasion of our homeland, stop supporting the corporate behemoths who dream of one universal customer base and get back in touch with the outdoors and the rhythmic heartbeat of nature.
Years ago I came across this prophetic quote and it has stuck with me ever since. This man foresaw the horror of our modern "global village", a horror that is now threatening to engulf us all:
In a 1932 essay filed from Berlin, the critic Giovanni Battista Angioletti warned Italians of the dire fate that awaited them if they succumbed to the seductions of foreign models of modernity:
[Y]ou will be an element, an atom of the crowd... surrounded by four million men similar to yourself, who have your same thoughts... You will see the green fields and open sky only on Saturdays and Sundays. You will never know your neighbors, and for your whole life you will be a complete unknown in the city where you live.
No surprise that another large multi-national corporation is accused of cheating its customers:
“Our information comes from former employees at Anheuser-Busch, who have informed us that as a matter of corporate practice, all of their products [mentioned in the lawsuit] are watered down,” [attorney Josh] Boxer said, according to the Associated Press. “It's a simple cost-saving measure, and it's very significant.”
The excess water is added just before bottling and cuts the stated alcohol content by 3% to 8%, he said.
Now when I think of watered-down beer I immediately think of one brand: Miller Lite. How anyone could drink a bottle of that liquid nothingness was always beyond me and I'm one of the great lightweights of all time. The fact is, Lite tastes like a glass of water with a slight hint of beer. Hell, Aquafina holds more of a kick.
And so THAT got me to thinking about the whole Lite Beer from Miller ad campaign, going back to the '70s and '80s, when they used ultra-macho pro sports athletes:
to talk skeptical American males into believing that they weren't the following if they drank light beer:
Of course, the notion that drinking light beer can make you feminine is long gone in our modern American society. So far gone that contemporary Lite beer campaigns make drinking their dainty swill a test of manhood in and of itself:
The ridiculousness of that last ad isn't just in the claim that drinking Lite beer makes you more manly. It's in the very fact that they are bragging about the so-called "triple-hops brewed" quality of their beer. What makes that so outrageous is the simple fact that hops is estrogenic, so adding "triple hops" to the process means they are giving you manly macho men THREE TIMES the estrogen you would normally be consuming.
Triple the estrogen makes you more of a man! Only in our modern American corporate wasteland could something like that fly.
Prior to the German Beer Purity Act of 1516, beer almost never contained hops. In fact, more than one hundred different plants were used in brewing beer for at least ten thousand years prior to the introduction of hops in the middle ages. For the last thousand years of that period, the most dominant form of “beer” was called gruit, which contained a mixture of yarrow, bog myrtle, and marsh rosemary. These herbs, especially in beer, are sexually and mentally stimulating. (It is rare to become sleepy when drinking un-hopped beers.)
The Catholic Church had a monopoly on the production of gruit, but competing merchants and the Protestants worked together to break their monopoly and force the removal of all sexually stimulating herbs from beer. They replaced them with an herb that puts the drinker to sleep and dulls sexual drive in the male. The legislative arguments of the day all hinged on the issue of the stimulating effects of other herbs that were used in beer. A pilsner, for example, was originally a henbane beer (pilsen means “henbane”), which is an incredibly strong, psychoactive beer, used earlier in history by German berserkers before battle. The German Beer Purity Act was, in effect, the first drug control law ever enacted.
And then THAT got me to thinking about the extra research I did into this fascinating topic:
One of the arguments of the Protestants against the Catholic clergy (and indeed of Catholicism) was Catholic self-indulgence: in food, drink, and lavish life style. And it was this Protestant outrage that was the genesis of the temperance movement. (It would not stop, of course, with the assault on gruit ales but would continue on to include ale itself and any kind of psychotropic or inebriating plants and drinks by the twentieth century.)
The Protestant reformists were joined by merchants and competing royals desiring to break the brewing monopoly of the church. The result was, ultimately, the end of a many-thousand-year tradition of herbal beer making in Europe and the narrowing of beer and ale into one limited expression of beer production, that of hopped ales or what we today call beer.
The fact of the matter is, the potency of your beer had been weakened immensely a long time before Anheuser-Busch got bought by a soulless Belgian multinational. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Protestant Reformation - the original buzzkill.
