Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
For The Children
Sen. Hillary Clinton has demonstrated the wisdom of TIK #108.
You skip Christmas and celebrate Kwaanza, it’s your business. Fly the flag upside-down in your front yard, that’s your decision. Start a new religion that involves covering your naked body with chocolate syrup and mayonnaise and baying at the full moon at midnight, more power to ya. The rest of us will keep quite, or babble incoherently about how wonderful it is to have freedom of speech and our strength lies in our diversity.
Let your kids watch too much television or play too many video games, and everybody — everybody — has an opinion about it. And, suddenly, no, we’re not all that interested in letting you do your stuff the way you’re going to do it. We have to think about the chiiiiiiillldrreeeeeeeennnnnnn……..
Which, for the record, I’m not saying is incorrect. But I find it a little hypocritical to say we honor diversity by allowing everyone to live their own lives however they will, and suddenly we want to slap a bunch of rules on how they raise their kids. It makes me question the level of commitment we have to protecting the private decisions people will make. It’s like we grant license to others to disagree with us culturally, so long as they keep it within a single generation. That’s the boundary.
And Sen. Clinton opines…it makes one wonder what the event is that got this started, hmmm…
Madison Ave. ad execs are so bent on taking control of America’s children, they’d put computer chips in kids’ brains if they could, Sen. Hillary Clinton said yesterday.
Saying advertisers have found so many new ways to get at kids through video games and the Internet, Clinton warned that we’re verging on a society out of a grim science fiction novel.
“At the rate that technology is advancing, people will be implanting chips in our children to advertise directly into their brains and tell them what kind of products to buy,” Clinton said at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The New York Democrat said the country was performing a “massive experiment” on kids who average more than six hours a day with media and advertising, soaking it up through TV, computers, games and iPods. She said the fastest growing advertising market is the 6- and under set, and that children’s health is already being hurt by products like Camel’s candy-flavored cigarettes and junk food sold with tips for video games – used to sell more junk food.
“People are spending billions and billions of dollars enticing children basically to be obsessed with food,” she said. “These foods are almost universally unhealthy.” Clinton has offered legislation to study the effects of the “advertising-saturated, media-intense” world on kids.
Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University, said Clinton and other politicians like to attack advertising because it’s easier than trying to ban bad food products or fund broad education programs.
“To go after advertising really makes no sense,” he said. “It’s sort of a backdoor tack, but it’s the safer one politically.”
Also, for whatever it’s worth, as far as the general concern I agree with the Senator. Our kids are being made more vulnerable to suggestion. Anybody who watches a japanese cartoon with them, for a minute or two, can see it’s true.
Not that I have room to complain. I wasn’t sitting there like a little version of Spock, or Sherlock Holmes, indulging in crystal-clear, cool-headed forensic thinking when Bill Cosby was trying to push chocolate pudding and jello on me between segments of Wiley Coyote chasing the Road Runner. I was half asleep. I probably drooled on my pajamas.
Which is kind of encouraging in it’s own way, since it’s difficult to assert the problem is really getting worse.
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