Icon of environmentalism coöpted to market SUVs

I had forgotten about this piece that was one of the reasons I started thinking about this blog.  One of the green newsletters I get reminded me about it today. Link below.

I suppose the party that deserves the most blame is the Geisel Estate for allowing his creations to be used in this way.  I mean, gross marketing and advertising people really don't have a "floor" for how low they'll go.  It isn't like we should be surprised by them so completely twisting a thing's essence as a means of attracting attention, positive or negative.  The whole 1984 thing, but 18 years later. 

Speaking of, how about this?
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?...[B]y the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

In my eyes, the one thing Orwell got wrong was that rendering everyone unconscious is most easily achieved not by force and rigidity, but by just appealing to humanity's basic and inate sense of laziness and it's love of spectacle.  That's the part that Pixar got right in Wall-E.

And here is the link to the Washington Post piece on Mazda's use of the Lorax in marketing: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/virginia-schools-insider/post/the-lorax-helps-market-mazda-suvs-to-elementary-school-children-nationwide/2012/02/28/gIQAQhRMiR_blog.html

Warner puts Maccabees movie on hold; Mel Gibson still anti-semitic

I have to admit to having been completely skeptical about Mel Gibson making a movie about one of Judaism's most inspirational stories.  It just smelled like a PR move.

Now, the screenwriter working on the project - Joe Eszterhas, writer of Flashdance, Basic Instinct, Sliver, etc. - has written Gibson a 9-page letter denouncing him for never really intending to make the film.  "Instead, Eszterhas said, Gibson announced the project “in an attempt to deflect continuing charges of anti-Semitism which have dogged you, charges which have crippled your career.”"

This isn't terribly surprising to jews.  It is a little surprising that Eszterhas really felt that Gibson was coming into the project unbiased.  "After encountering Gibson’s conduct, Eszterhas writes that he felt trapped, but then decided to ignore the racist remarks and write the script based on his own research."  All of this after Eszterhas wrote this in his 2008 book: "No doubt now.  Mel was a raving anti-semite who ... shared the mindset of Adolf Hitler." 

What exactly was it that made Joe think Mel had had a change of heart? 

A nice quote from his letter:

"You continually called Jews 'Hebes' and 'oven-dodgers' and 'Jewboys.' It seemed that most times when we discussed someone, you asked 'He’s a Hebe, isn’t he?' You said most 'gatekeepers' of American companies were 'Hebes' who 'controlled their bosses.'"
[Oven-dodgers?  Nice, really nice.]


 The article and the letter itself.

Murderer is ACTUALLY a victim

"Shaken Baby Syndrome" used in defense of Trayvon Martin's killer

 

Police have not arrested Zimmerman because the use of lethal force in self defense is permitted under the Stand Your Ground law approved by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush in 2005.

 ...

"He didn't commit any crime," Unrig said on CBS. "He was attacked, broke his nose, hit his head into the ground and he defended himself. That's not against the law." 

America is such a better country with the Bush family protecting us.  Here's your link to the Reuters article.

Just be sure you take a shower and wear presentable underwear.

Supreme Court Ruling Allows Strip Searches for Any Arrest

 Really?  Really?  

"According to opinions in the lower courts, people may be strip-searched after arrests for violating a leash law, driving without a license and failing to pay child support. Citing examples from briefs submitted to the Supreme Court, Justice Breyer wrote that people have been subjected to “the humiliation of a visual strip search” after being arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, failing to use a turn signal and riding a bicycle without an audible bell.

A nun was strip-searched, he wrote, after an arrest for trespassing during an antiwar demonstration."

 Sigh.  Here is a NYTimes article on the ruling.