The evolution of villains into good guys in television commercials.

Remember Joe Isuzu.  For those not watching TV in the late 80’s, Joe Isuzu was the insincere, slimy, greasy-haired, double-talking fictional spokesperson for the Isuzu line of cars and trucks.  Played to obsequious perfection by David Leisure, Joe Isuzu used the oiliest and most transparently hypocritical of demeanors to state such outrageous lies as “It […]

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Again a writer uses accurate facts to propose something that isn’t true.

Over the weekend, Yahoo’s home page linked to an article titled “The Middle Class in America is Radically Shrinking.  Here Are the Stats to Prove It.” on Yahoo! Finance.  The article originally appeared in “The Business Insider,” and was written by Michael Snyder, editor of a website called theeconomiccollapseblog.com, which builds a case for a […]

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Advertiser tells us that the highest sensual pleasure is eating sugar-coated cereal.

I’m guessing that most house dogs allowed to lollygag around the living rooms of middle class households have been neutered or spayed.  Left without sex, the highest sensual pleasure of house dogs would likely be when someone rubs them on their belly. What are we then to think about the TV commercial, now around for […]

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A great new idea that’s decades old, Breitbart gets off easy, food writer tastes the Tea-aid.

Here’s one day in the life of this observer of mass media: Yesterday afternoon: Read the latest issue of Nation magazine to find a wonderful article in which Christian Parenti proposes that the Obama Administration kickstart the move to cleaner energy sources by orienting government purchases towards the clean and green.  Parenti lists electrical vehicles, […]

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We won’t know the true power or meaning of the Tea Party movement until the November midterm elections.

In a blog entry of February 28, I said that the mainstream media was paying too much attention to the Tea Party movement.  I stated rather bluntly that at that point, the impact of the Tea Party was zero.  This statement came before the primaries in which Tea Party candidates have tended to do ill […]

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Ross Douthat blames racist views of some rural whites on the admissions practices of eight elite colleges.

In his opinion piece in yesterday’s New York Times, Ross Douthat blames the racist and anti-immigrant views of some rural whites on the admissions policies of eight elite colleges. In a masterpiece of specious reasoning and selective fact reporting, Harvard-educated Douthat declares that Pat Buchanan was right when he said that the American elite discriminate […]

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Chill out your sun-fevered brain with some interesting contemporary poetry.

Most book review sections approach summer as if it were a time to turn off the brain and wallow in escapist plots and fantasy characters.  Summer reading, we are told again and again, should focus on light, easy-to-digest genre fiction like mystery, sci-fi, gothic and romance.  The assumption, I guess, is that when sitting on […]

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Tea’d-up Republicans spout falsehoods and absurdities through mouths full of shoe.

Here’s a multiple choice question that would fit into any SAT or GRE test: Which one of these verbal miscues does not belong? Sarah Palin confuses the California city of Eureka with Eureka College in Illinois. David Vitter, Senator from Louisiana running for reelection, suggests that an appropriate group should go to court over the […]

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Another example of the news media turning discussions of important issues into a fight between personalities.

I know I’m not the first to point out the proclivity of the mass media to turn discussions of important issues into fights between people.  Instead of discussing the issues in a rational way or seeking to sift the truth from the obfuscation, the media prefers to focus attention on polls, slips-of-the-tongue, gotcha’s, false accusations […]

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Columnist shows us how to indoctrinate children in the ideology of spendthrift consumerism.

I want to begin with a big bravo to Robert Reich and Nation Magazine for the special July 19/26 double issue on the growing inequality of wealth in the United States and how it is ruining the nation economically, a subject that I have dealt with extensively in this blog lately, including on June 14 […]

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