Mark Morford has a great rant in today’s San Francisco Chronicle. His point of departure is a new TV ad for home security systems, but Morford (correctly, in my opinion) recognizes it as another entry in the relentless campaign to Keep America Scared. Fear is good business, as the Republicans in particular and the entire world business culture know so very well. I’m fucking sick of it, and so is Mark Morford:
Jogger watches clean-cut yuppie husband disappear down street, stands up and drops his chin and his eyes turn evil and his face turns shadowy and he immediately pulls a black hoodie up over his head and turns toward yuppie couple’s walkway and begins to RUN FULL SPEED straight at yuppie couple’s front door and KICKS IT IN FULL FORCE OH MY GOD NO!
Ah! But yuppie wife remembered to arm fancy new security system! Alarm sounds! Beep beep beep! Intruder-rapist-jogger stops dead in his tracks! He is bewildered by all this crazy beeping and immediately turns around and runs off before he can get anywhere near blond trophy wife to (presumably) attack her with chain saws and eat her eyeballs and steal her pretty Franck Muller watch and laugh maniacally!
…
That yuppie utopian all-white dream house? That’s America, silly. Your overpriced security system? The Patriot Act. The “war on terror.” Wiretapping. Rumsfeld’s black and lethal heart. The trillion-dollar destruction of Iraq, a country that had little to do with angry rapist-joggers but who the hell cares because they’re all dark skinned and hateful and Muslim anyway, right? Of course they are.
…
I am sick, made nauseated, made furious by the relentless plays on phony childish fears. I have had enough of insidious horror movies and schlocky cop dramas and inane TV commercials right along with their ideological brethren in the NRA and the Department of Homeland Security and the sneering GOP, all of whom make hollow attempts to invent more dangers in the world for their own violence-laced agendas.
I am done, furthermore, with a villainous Republican-poisoned government whose sole agenda for the past five years has been to force the bitter cement of counterfeit fear into every joint and cranny of fluid and luminous life, all while brutally ignoring all the genuine problems and woes of the planet (global warming, poverty, abstinence programs, Ashlee Simpson, etc.). They are cretins and ideologues and they deserve a deep sense of shame.
Read the whole column.
I believe that advertising and politics have become one and the same. I see no distinction between the two.They thrive and feed on each other. Pols need money to buy ads. Money is collected by pols to feed the big media companies, who in turn give a little back to the Pols who collect more from their supporters to give more to the media companies.This is why you will never hear more than lip service about campaign finance reform on any television show or any radio station or any major newspaper. These elections are their golden geese.In Chicago we have some type of election at least every two years. With every office seeker from the local alderman to the president collecting and funneling that money right to the major media companies. I am sick of it also. I watch very little commercial t.v. also very little radio. I don’t mind getting literature or a person at my door seeking or supporting one for office. What I did mind very much was receiving telemarketing calls by candidates.Some how I don’t see any of them rising up to propose bills or outlawing political telemarketing.
I believe that advertising and politics have become one and the same. I see no distinction between the two.They thrive and feed on each other. Pols need money to buy ads. Money is collected by pols to feed the big media companies, who in turn give a little back to the Pols who collect more from their supporters to give more to the media companies.This is why you will never hear more than lip service about campaign finance reform on any television show or any radio station or any major newspaper. These elections are their golden geese.In Chicago we have some type of election at least every two years. With every office seeker from the local alderman to the president collecting and funneling that money right to the major media companies. I am sick of it also. I watch very little commercial t.v. also very little radio. I don’t mind getting literature or a person at my door seeking or supporting one for office. What I did mind very much was receiving telemarketing calls by candidates.Some how I don’t see any of them rising up to propose bills or outlawing political telemarketing.