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When satire becomes redundant

On the heels of Ted Nugent's Yes Men-like performance at the NRA convention, the idea that you can mock capitalism by pretending to channel the essence of its most aggresive practitioners takes another hit. In this interview between CNBC's Larry Kudlow and Steven Milloy of the Free Enterprise Action Fund, the notion that corporations have any responsibility to something larger than themselves is treated with the same disdain that people usually reserve for terrorism or the designated hitter.

KUDLOW: Yeah, listen, so corporate social responsibility, social investing and then, of course, this whole idea of stakeholders--businesses aren't run for stakeholders, which are left-wing community activists. Businesses are run for shareholders, aren't they?

Mr. MILLOY: That's absolutely true. And we are here to say that the Free Enterprise Action Fund is here to remind corporate managements that their business is business. Their business is not caving in to anti-business activists. They gotta keep their eye on that ball. We want to be able to support corporate--as investors, we want to be able to support corporate managers who are fighting the good fight and fighting anti-business activists. And for corporate managers who are caving in to anti-business activists, we're gonna come down on 'em like a ton of bricks.

That's right, Mr. Manager. Destroy a Nigerian tribal community. Use Chinese slave labor. Set up a foreign subsidiary to work in countries that finance terrorism. If you show the slightest bit of concern for your fellow man, we will punish you!

Not content to merely espouse amoral management, Kudlow and Milloy get into such a froth about "liberal activism" that they completely lose all perspective:

KUDLOW: One of your anecdotes in the paper--this is unbelievable to me--the Rainforest Action Network decides to crusade against the loan policies of JP Morgan; they want to give more money to Third World countries, more money to environmentalists, I suppose. Now the Rainforest Network hoodwinked a bunch of seven-year-old grammar-school kids from Fairfield County, Connecticut, to go down there and allegedly march. Now this to me is a new low and is really kind of a form of child abuse. But anyway, tell us the story.

Mr. MILLOY: Well, we call it ideological child abuse. Yes, the Rainforest Action Network took second-graders out of a public school, transported 'em downtown to Manhattan so that they could protest JP Morgan. And the reason they picked the second-graders from Fairfield, Connecticut, is that's--'cause--where the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, William Harrison, lives. That's one of the most scurrilous things. It's, as Terry Corcoran of the National Post called it, ideological child abuse.

I wonder if they consider what Nestle does child abuse. Or Wal-Mart? Or the international textile and mining industries? But who has the time to worry about such things?

Not when the children of Fairfield are in such peril.

(via Metafilter)

This Month in New York City Critical Mass OR How Much Does It Cost the City to Run One of Those Police Copters All Night?

The cops here sure are getting all the mileage they can out of their RNC-funded, jacked-up mopeds. Have you seen these things? They're hilarious.

Tonight was my first critical mass ride since last summer, since before the Convention. I had no idea what a sad and intimidating mess it's become this year because of the whole paranoid round-up in August. Nobody has been spared the "permit required" hatchet since Cheney, et al, came to town; especially not a bunch of goofs who just want to ride their bikes around without getting clobbered by SUVs and cabs, myself included.

In the glory days, way back in the summer of 2004, people on bikes in New York City used to gather up in Union Square north on the last Friday of every month to wait for for the dude on the recumbent, towing a couple of speaker cabinents and a boom box in a trailer hooked to his bike to press play and make his way out on the street. That was as organized as it got. That guy usually started the show and the rest of us would follow, making our leisurely way through the streets of New York for an hour or two, inconveniencing traffic for a few minutes at a time, trying to demonstrate the power of the bike.

Nothing hugely lofty, but something I can get behind. I had a blast on those rides. We once even made our way through Times Square where a pretty good segment of the ride stopped, dismounted and held their bikes above their heads while the cops kept the cars back. It was a parade for simpler living and self-sufficiency. Plus whatever else you wanted to toss in: more bikes, less cars; no war for oil, whatever.

That's all on hold for the time being. Ever since the Convention, shit is way different. I missed the ride in March, but the rumor at Union Square tonight was that last month, the cops didn't even wait for the ride to start. They apparently surrounded the crowd with orange plastic netting and took to cutting their bikes loose from across the street, taking everything in their path into custody. I wasn't there, so I can't really speak to that. Maybe another author or somebody in the comments can fill us in on that one?

This time, I could tell people were uneasy. Things started early, close to 6:30. Someone involved in the NYC bike scene who'd been arrested spoke; he said some 50-odd people this year alone have been hauled in during critical mass. Can't remember his name, sorry. Normal Siegel spoke for while, condeming the city and its draconian policing since the RNC. And of course, Reverend Billy did his thing.

They wrapped up around 7, when the ride was supposed to start. Nobody did anything but mill. At this point, I'd guess there were at least 50 cops in the immediate vicinity. Only a handful right close to where the speeches were, but on my way in, I saw a few different groups congregating on the outskirts.

The word came through the crowd that a ride was leaving from Tompkins Square Park and people filtered out on their way to that one, or elsewhere, I'm not entirely sure. 20 minutes passed and still nothing. Then, from the east side of 14th street, a half dozen people came by on their bikes yelling for the ride to start. The crowd slowly moved off the plaza at Union Square South and headed down University, the wrong way. This wasn't the first sign, but it was a pretty good one that this was going to be not so much a fun ride as a ride to avoid the cops. Whatever critical mass does to mess with the cars, it never goes the wrong way down a street. Following the flow of traffic is a pretty crucial part of the critical mass thing; the whole idea is we're a vaild form of transport and we just need to be taken seriously.

Anyway, it was a very small crowd. Maybe 50-75 bikers, which is literally nothing in comparison to the rides of last summer, which were easily in the high hundreds, if not thousands at times. And nothing leisurely about it. We were riding to avoid the cops, who were on us after a matter of maybe a dozen blocks. There's something not a bit creepy about looking back over your shoulder to see 20 visor-shielded police on mopeds right on your tail.

We took a circuitous route through the West Village -- to shake them off our trail? I have no idea -- and made our way back up Hudson, only to have them come shooting out in a kind of Smokey and the Bear roadblock move from Perry or Charles Street, whichever goes east to west, to cut us off. Some people went through; others took to the sidestreets. I made it all the way up 8th Ave into the high teens before I backed off when I saw the vans and cruisers swarming in. I personally saw 4 people arrested and their bikes thrown in the trunks of cars.

Meanwhile, apparently other rides had formed from Union Square and were making their way toward Washington Square. The few of us left still hanging around headed that way. We met up with whichever ride it was at this point and followed it. I hung pretty far back because I didn't have any interest in having my bike stolen by the cops (and the word is you don't ever get it back) on the weekend of the 5 Boro Tour. I got to ride with the plainclothes cops at the back, who, in a crowd full of rail-thin single-speed kids, are gonna tend to stand out.

I lost track of where the ride had gone when it left Broadway. I assumed it was going east and I only had to follow the police helicopter to figure that out. Oh, did I mention that? Yeah, they had a helicopter following us the entire time, circling Union Square well before any rides started. I finally made it over to Avenue A and 6th street around 8:30, which for all intents and purposes is where the night and the rides came to an end.

More people were arrested; I don't know how many. A rumor went around that one of them was a writer for the Times. He had some credentials around his neck, but that's all I can say for sure. The last guy to go was getting a pretty good-sized crowd behind him, yelling at the cops to let him free and not to steal his bike. At this point, an ABC 7 news van had arrived (I didn't catch the 11 o'clock, but a cursory glance at their website give me a murder, a stalking, a 9-year-old getting stabbed, and tree killing beatle eggs. No critical mass.)

More milling, more yelling. Eventually, the moped cops showed up, along with their friends from the riot division and a healthy cavalcade of vans full of beat cops. I would guess, at ten to 9 o'clock, on the corner of A and 6th, there had to have been 100 cops, if not 150. All for the sake of -- at that point -- maybe 40 riders. Maybe. Who had had their fill of running from the fuzz for the day and were pretty content to yell at the police and not much more. Did I mention the helicopter? They were still busy overhead. Now, I'm not up on my subscription to Modern Policing but I'm going to take a guess that this one was a little bit in the overkill.

I don't really know how to sum up. That was it. Everybody dispersed. I went and drank some beer. It was sad. Sad and mind-blowingly frustrating. Critical mass is a good thing. I have a really hard time understanding how a once-a-month ride can possibly be a bad thing, let alone warrant as massive a law enforcement display as the one I saw tonight. Over what? A permit? After years of peacful riding? This ride marked the 12th anniversary of critical mass in New York and what a shit way to do it, people. I don't need to get into the Republican administration and Bloomberg's ass-kissing and the RNC protestors and the dirty pier and all that. We all know about that. Just remember this next time you're thinking, "Goddamn, was that a shitty time," because that time is very much this time. It's a time when you could literally be arrested just for riding your bike on the street. Seriously. It's really come to that. I hope to see you all on the 27th, because while we may not be able to ride for free right now, they're not ever going to shut us down.

Eureka

The latest issue of The New York Review of Books takes on Malcom Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.  I didn't have to read the review. Just reading the title of the book was enough to tell me it was probably a smartly written but insufficiently supported exposition of a clearly erroneous premise.

After reading the review, one can only hope that it will act as the final straw to turn the critical tide against this book and send it to the remainder bin.

You're the doctor!

The Los Angeles Times reports on a new study that appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association:

In an unusual experiment in which actresses posed as patients, doctors were five times more likely to write them prescriptions after the patients inquired about a specific antidepressant, Paxil. The actresses pretended to have a mild form of depression, a condition that does not require antidepressants...

"When patients ask for a drug, they tend to get a drug regardless of whether it is appropriate for them," said Joel Weissman, a health policy expert at Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the research.

A few years ago, after seeing a GP who recommended numerous drugs to me that I had no immediate need for, I started collecting prescriptions (with no intention of ever filling them). I think I got four from that doctor and three from the specialist he referred me to. A year later, I had stash of 10-12; if I kept at it, I thought it would make a nice art project, but then I realized that I'm not an artist, and didn't want to keep seeing sheep for doctors.

Ted Nugent: performance artist

The Associate Press reports on Ted Nugent's speech at a recent NRA convention. He should think about joining the Yes Men.

(Via Metafilter)

Stamp Art

Maybe you saw the announcement that Stamps.com is once again offering civilians the opportunity to make their own bona fide postage stamps. The new terms are so restrictive that pretty much anything you'd want to see on a stamp is forbidden, and gaming the system can set you up for a lawsuit. Some pranksters will no doubt try to subvert the Stamps.com policy anyway, but I'd say Michael Hernandez de Luna has a better approach: cut out the middle man. De Luna and other stamp artists have been creating satirical stamps and sending them through the mail for years. In fact, I just got one a few weeks ago on a postcard for a group show that de Luna curated, Axis of Evil: The Secret History of Sin.

This is, of course, illegal. In fact, one of the galleries hosting Axis of Evil received a visit from the Secret Service. Around post offices in Chicago, de Luna is notorious and he's seen a decided drop in the number of fake stamps he is able to get through. But so far, de Luna has more or less ignored visits from the secret service -- not to mention postal authorities and the feds -- and kept doing what he's doing. Why he hasn't gotten in trouble after all these years is a mystery, but I suspect that the powers that be may not want to spend too much energy going after someone who uses the mail for art, particularly since prosecuting would not only cost more than its worth but would ultimately publicize the practice it aims to prohibit. 

After all, making a fake postage stamp is easy these days, thanks to cheap publishing technologies. And many postal workers are overworked humans who appreciate a good joke like the rest of us. I got an email from a postal worker a couple of years ago regarding de Luna's work:

I see hundreds of thousands of letters canceled every  night in automated cancelling machines. There are things that one can do to fool this machinery into thinking a real stamp has been placed on the letter. You may not be aware, but the postal service has a LONG tradition of treating it's workers poorly, so that even if a lot of workers saw fake stamps, they probably wouldn't even mention it to a supervisor. In fact, I'm sure that if some workers saw fake stamps, they would probably be VERY interested in making sure they got cancelled as though they were real stamps, and would possibly even show a few co-workers.

By the way, if you're interested in learning more about the history of stamp art -- and viewing some hilarious examples -- check out The Stamp Art & Postal History of Michael Thompson & Michael Hernandez de Luna (BadPress Books). (Powells | Amazon)

De Luna is looking for a gallery willing to host Axis of Evil in New York. Any interested parties can contact me and I'll put you in touch.

I have postulated the existence of a dazzling new concept

This is big news.

So, everyone's familiar with the concept of "wuv", right? The emotion related to "love" but more commonly praticed by bunnies, little pudgy naked babies/angels, and other cute things? As in a small, treacly cute figure with extended arms saying "I wuv you this much."

awww...ugh...

Okay, since we all get the concept of "wuv," now consider this:

Wust.

My girlfriend Sally thinks "wust" can best be thought of as what the woman on the cover of a romance novel is feeling; I think it may also have something to do with plushies and furophiles feel. Either way, once again I've managed to creep myself out.

Mother Jones on drugs

The current issue of Mother Jones has a couple of good articles. Those who remain unconvinced of the dangers of mental health screening should read Medicating Aliah, which uses the story of a 13-year-old Texas girl as a hook for a larger story about psychiatric screening. Aliah Gleason was basically a pain in the ass at school, which led school officials to diagnose her with "oppositional disorder" and hand her over to psychiatrists. The psychiatrists, following state guidelilnes, tested her, deemed her suicidal, took her from her parents, dosed her with psychiatric meds, and committed her to an institution. If the New York screening program is anything like the ones in Texas and Pennsylvania, let's just say we're in trouble.

The other story focuses on David Graham, the Food and Drug Administration researcher who exposed a number of unsafe drugs, including Vioxx. Vioxx is estimated is to have killed tens of thousands of Americans; it is, as reporter Michael Scherer suggests, a pharmaceutical Vietnam. Graham is portrayed as a genuinely tragic hero in a regulatory charade wherein the FDA is funded by the very drugs it purports to evaluate. According to the story, nearly half of the FDA's $400 million drug evaluation budget is paid for by industry.

Reading this reminded me an old idea I had for a board game. I thought it'd be funny to make a game where players buy and sell various diseases and side effects, with the goal of eliminating all of their health problems. I haven't the foggiest idea how to make a proper game, but if any of you entrepreneurs out there think you could make this idea work, do let me know.

An Open Plea to the New York Post

Tuesday's Page Six had a feature that began

PETA is barking mad at Kelly Osbourne because she dyed her English bulldog, Piglet, hot pink using human hair dye.

This sentence is such an embarrassment of riches, I don't know where to begin. PETA is nuts; Kelly Osbourne is talentless; Piglet is a horrible name for an English bulldog - a dog with dignity - and dying it pink should be a capital crime.

But "barking mad"? I get it, New York Post, it is a story about a dog. If it were a rabbit, PETA would be 'hopping mad.' If it were a cat, they would be 'me-outraged.' If it were a turtle, they would be 'doing a slow burn.'

At the heart of the story is an accusation of animal abuse. Either it is a serious story and you should write a serious article, or, as I suspect, it is a mockable piece of non-news and you should get a real comedy writer to give PETA and Kelly Osbourne the skewerings they deserve.

Can email make you stupid?

For years, I've been complaining about my rapidly declining attention span. After reading a New York Times Magazine story last December, I thought it might be simple, age-related mental decay. But thanks to The Guardian, I can now blame another culprit: email.

The distractions of constant emails, text and phone messages are a greater threat to IQ and concentration than taking cannabis, according to a survey of befuddled volunteers.

Doziness, lethargy and an increasing inability to focus reached "startling" levels in the trials by 1,100 people, who also demonstrated that emails in particular have an addictive, drug-like grip...

UPDATE: This "study" is based on very sketchy research and appears to be part of a publicity campaign by Hewlett Packard. Thanks to the Daily Heights for setting us straight.

UPDATE: Although I'm embarrassed to have been taken in by HP's press release, the underlying problem it describes is real, at least for yours truly. So I'm sticking by the regimen I wrote about earlier (below).

Granted, I blamed my internet use even before I knew these pointy heads could back me up. Booting up in the morning is my caffeine. My heartbeat quickens, my muscles tense when I go online. It takes about 20-30 minutes to root through my email; after that, I sit in front of the computer for up to 12 hours impulsively alternating between email, RSS feeds, the web, and design software. Like many people, I juggle tasks, and inbetween jugglings I check my email -- sometimes as often as once a minute. Usually, there is no rational reason to do this; I'm not expecting anything particularly important. Rather, I'm like the mice in those psychology experiments who robotically push the lever that they associate with a treat (long after their appetites are sated).

I used to get up in the morning, read, meditate (or something resembling meditation), and write for a couple of hours before going online. But in the past year or two, I haven't had the patience. From this day forth, however, I'm turning over a new leaf. I didn't make any New Year's resolutions this year so here are my resolutions four months late. From now on:

• I'll spend at least an hour in the morning reading or writing offline.
• After initially checking email, I'll close my email client and open it only every two hours
• Except in unusual circumstances (this one will be esp. tough when I'm on deadline), the computer will go off no later than 11:15 p.m.

...and that's probably enough reform for now. I'll let you know how it goes.

Walton 342, Shaq 350

Speaking of basketball, even you non-sports fans have heard of Shaquille O'Neal, right? Well, did you know as a professional player he only makes about half of his free throws? You know freethrows, those shots when no one is guarding you.

Artist Lee Walton has given Shaq a run for his money with Lee Walton's 2004-2005 Free Throw Championship. At the beginning of the season, Walton began the contest with the Miami Heat's star player. Of course Shaq had no idea he was participating.  Walton's site explains the rules; Walton would tally up the number of free throw attempts Shaq made in a game, then go to the local park and, using the same number of attempts, try to beat Shaq's score. Over the course of the season, videos of Walton's attempts (as well as amusing pre- and post- shot commentary from Walton) were posted on Walton's site with a running score over the course of the season. Shaq was so bad that Walton managed to stay ahead -- until snow fell in NYC, which seriously affected his game. It seems Walton was never able to recover from that deficit. However Shaq only beat Walton by 8 points over the whole season!

If you like this one, Walton is also known for his One Shot A Day project where he played 18 holes of golf by taking one swing each day. The full golf game took him over five months of daily visits to the course. The video from this project is equally hilarious.

Awareness Fatigue

If you were worried that maybe you weren't aware of enough things, Carol and Alexandra Ernst and the 4Paws Rescue Team think you should be "aware" of the need to spay or neuter your pets (press release below the fold) and are now selling awareness bracelets to that effect. (Ribbons are sooo yesterday.)

11-year-old Alexandra says that she hopes to "give cats a voice," but I would imagine that if cats could speak, they'd say Let me keep my balls! Once word gets out on the cat grapevine, cats are going to recognize these bracelets and run from people wearing them like they were Jehova's Witnesses.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WASHINGTON, D.C. AREA ANIMAL RESCUE TEAM WORKS TO PROMOTE AWARENESS FOR SPAYING AND NEUTERING

Centreville Mother-Daughter Duo Distribute Awareness Bracelets to 'Give Pets A Voice'

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 21, 2005 - A local mother and daughter team are working together this spring to give cats and dogs in the nation's capital a stronger voice and to raise awareness about the pet overpopulation crisis.

4Paws Rescue Team volunteers Carol Ernst and her 11-year-old daughter, Alexandra, of Centreville, Va., came up with the idea of distributing the "awareness" bracelets to promote pet adoption as well as spaying and neutering. The bracelets cost $3.00 with proceeds benefiting 4Paws Rescue Team, a Washington, D.C. area nonprofit organization dedicated to saving neglected, abandoned, abused and unwanted cats and kittens.

The Ernsts, along with the help of the nonprofit's nearly 100 volunteers, will be armed this spring with the bracelets at adoption fairs and other events. Bracelets also are expected to be available at area veterinary clinics and local animal shelters. More information about the bracelets is available on 4Paws' Web site at www.fourpaws.org.

"Every year as spring brings warmer weather, animal shelters and rescue organizations are inundated with homeless animals," said Barbara Lipson, President of 4Paws. "We hope that these 'awareness' bracelets will greatly increase people's understanding of the near-epidemic number of cats and kittens that will be euthanized in the D.C. metropolitan area because of rampant pet overpopulation and shortage of available homes."

"4Paws' goal is to distribute 2,000 'awareness' bracelets and, more importantly, to educate people, especially youngsters, about responsible pet care," said Carol Ernst, a substitute elementary school teacher. She has been a 4Paws volunteer since 2001 and participates in the organization's education program geared at teaching local elementary school children about appropriate handling and treatment of domestic animals.

"These 'awareness' bracelets will help families better understand that bringing
home a pet is a responsibility that carries with it both a time and financial commitment," she added.  "People need to understand that their responsibility to their new cat or kitten extends beyond providing food and shelter. Equally important is providing these new pets with appropriate veterinary care including spay or neuter surgery to ensure that their pets do not contribute to the overpopulation crisis."

Three felines  including two adopted through 4Paws  permanently share a home with the Ernsts. Since becoming volunteers four years ago, the family
has provided temporary homes for 66 foster cats and kittens. The experience of caring for these previously homeless cats and then helping to find them permanent homes has prompted Alexandra Ernst to go one step further. Twice a year - on her birthday and at Christmas - she donates her monetary gifts to 4Paws.

"I think the 'awareness' bracelets will give the cats a voice," Alexandra Ernst said.  "I am an animal lover and a lot of kids don't understand what you need to do to be a pet owner. These bracelets will get people talking about cats and dogs and having a pet."

4Paws volunteers help save the lives of hundreds of cats and kittens each year. They work at monthly adoption fairs, serve as foster families to needy cats and provide assistance to adoptive families through in-home visits and phone support. Since its inception in 1995, 4Paws volunteers have found permanent homes for nearly 5,000 cats and kittens. Last year alone, 4Paws adopted out nearly 400 cats and kittens.

Pocket Judge

My friend Becky (and her friend Jeff) put together this nifty eBay auction:

Are you tired of "activist judges" so enamored of bothersome issues like environmental protection, civil rights and a crazy little thing called justice? Corporations and lobbyists have judges in their back pockets, and now, you can, too!

Introducing...  Pocket Judge(TM)! Stick one in your hip pocket and it'll be hip to YOUR special interests.

LeBron James Makes Surprise Appearance in Stay Free!

We don't talk about sports much on this blog, but I saw this NBATV ad on a Manhattan phone kiosk, updated to talk about "playoff coverage."

Savvy basketball fans will catch a second thing in this advertisement that will be missing from their playoff coverage.

 

Diabetes Association flip-flops on diabetes

The American Diabetes Association recently announced its new partnership with Cadbury Schweppes, which... ok... may not be the most ironic sponsorship deal I've heard of -- that would be Coca-Cola's sponsorship of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) -- but it's close.

(Via Commercial Alert)

Save the Children So They Might Be Killed Later

Unborn Baby Ornament, US Troop Model

You want to support the troops, but you can't have your war-supportin' take away time from your abortion hatin'. Thankfully, Miss Poppy has the solution.

In fact, Miss Poppy has so many Christian goodies for sale you won't be able to stop browsing. As a poker aficionado in desperate need of salvation, I don't know how I can resist these Catholic Doctrine Playing Cards.

(Via Lindsayism)

I Fake It So Real I Am Beyond Fake

Since I am now the resident breast-news poster, I bring you the Evolution by Margarita bra. According to the Brastraps.com press release:

[Evolution] features a sculpted, graduated cup specially designed to mimic the appearance of cosmetic breast implants by lifting and slightly separating each breast to appear fuller and firmer both in and out of clothing.

Now, the joke here obviously writes itself, but in case you didn't get it, the Brastraps website says that the bra is "designed to create a natural cosmetically enhanced look." And I thought Frank Luntz was Orwellian.

Not that I'm complaining.

(Thanks, Jessica Clark)

Update on Video News Releases

I've been so wrapped up in getting the new Stay Free! out that I haven't had much blog time lately, but my friend Jim Hanas summed up the FCC's psuedo-response to the fake news controversy on his blog, Encyclopedia Hanasiana.

How to fake a townhall meeting

Here's an awesome clip from the Daily Show about the Bush administration's penchant for staging television-friendly (that is, fake) townhall meetings. The interview with Republican wordsmith Frank Luntz is priceless. This guy is such a brilliant media strategist and yet he seems absolutely unaware that the Daily Show coorespondant (Samantha Bee) us gunning for him.

(Via PR Watch)

Where have all the Corkies gone?

So earlier today my friend Galen sent me this email:

Has Rosie O'Donnell ever made you laugh?

Go to http://www.cbs.com and watch the promo for Riding the Bus with my Sister.

She may have single handedly set back mental retardation 100 years.

I watched the clip, and, sure enough, I puked a little bit right there in my mouth. Now, there's a certain level of awful the human mind is conditioned to expect when you hear the words "Hallmark Hall of Fame", but this has an unpleasant twist all its own, namely, why can't they cast a real retarded person in this role? Remember that show, "Life Goes On"? Awful, yes, but at least they used a REAL retarded person for the lead role. A real retarded person with an acting resumé that would make any of the coffeeshop-dwelling dipshits around Hollywood here moisten their pants with envy. It seems like if they did that here they could have paid them several hundred thousand less (provided they stipulated no outside counsel for contract negotiations) and they could have spared America from another cringetastic display from Ms. O'Donnell.

Rosie O'Donnell: not BIOLOGICALLY retarded.

If they used a genuinely retarded person they probably could have elicted emotions of respect and compassion instead of the nausea and embarassment this production seems doomed to produce.

 

Brooklyn Gets All 1996 On Your Ass

For those who want a taste of the new Brooklyn, Borough Hall has at last unveiled a new tourism Web site, complete with snazzy graphics, predictable Spike Lee quotes, and surprisingly, an intuitive, user-friendly interface. Some of the content is fairly impressive, ferinstance the restaurant list, which, despite coming up with bubkus for Bed-Stuy, actually goes beyond the traditional gentrified nabes. Other areas come up short (the "Getting Around" section lamely offers some MTA maps -- tourists should have no problems deciphering those ) while the "Attractions" and "Calendar" listings are obvious stopgaps waiting for further efforts, that, knowing Borough Hall's tiny budget, may never be carried out.

Welcome to Harvaard University

Companies in Asia sell fake merchandise from Ivy League universities all the type, but last week some ne'er-do-well in China tried to bootleg Harvard itself.

New old stuff from Stay Free! magazine

Since we've got a new issue coming out next month, I'm trying to get more of the back issues on the website. Here are a few items from issue #22, which came out last spring:

The Dark Side of Dog Breeding. Why can't purebred retrievers retrieve? How do sickly powder puffs win dog shows? What makes a dalmatian a dalmatian? Historian James Serpell discusses humanity's kinship with canines. See also The Breeders.

Stay Free! Pop Quiz.

Which of the following confessions was not prompted by Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ?
a. After seeing the movie, Norwegian neo-Nazi Johnny Olsen confessed to committing arson.
b. After seeing the movie, Turner Lee Bingham of Mesa, Arizona, confessed to committing burglary.
c. After seeing the movie, Texan Dan Leach told police he killed his pregnant girlfriend.
d. After seeing the movie, Ed Starr confessed to maiming a dog.
 

My New Favorite Thing. Books, movies, and other items we fancy:

Martin and Rowan's Laugh-In (TV)
Channel 101.com (video comedy)
Manic (movie)
USSR-Airspace.com (website)
Wizard People, Dear Reader (movie)
My hot glue gun (tool)

Big Ideas. Stay Free! readers share their get-rich-quick schemes and entrepreneurial experiences.

Subliminal Seduction. How did the uproar over subliminal advertising effect the advertising industry? Carrie McLaren on the paradox of advertising criticism.

 

Fortune 500, Irony 0

I was reading Fortune today because there was a copy in the men's room where I work. It was the Fortune 500 issue, which had a few articles about Wal-Mart (including a feature about the "Saturday Morning Meeting," which somehow simultaneously humanizes the company AND makes it seem even more like an Orwellian surveillance nightmare). But this isn't a Wal-Mart post.

There was a section of "wacky" facts about some of the Fortune 500 companies. Stupid stuff like "Rupert Murdoch considered himself a socialist when he attended Oxford." But this jumped out at me:

Product Launches You May Not Have Heard About
Aramis, a division of Estee Lauder (#346) is proud to announce Donald Trump: The Fragrance. The gold-topped scent has a masculine "blend of select green and aromatic notes."

Yes, that Trump certainly does have problems marketing himself. How would anyone possibly have found out about this product?

Also, would someone please tell me what it means when something smells "green"?

Evolution Control Committee and AAA in SF Wed.

Meanwhile in San Francisco... Evolution Control Committee, The Bureau of Urban Secrets, Finishing School and myself (representing the The Anti-Advertising Agency) will be speaking tomorrow night at the San Francisco Art Institute.  The talk is part of a Salon Series hosted by the SFAI Artists Committee discussing the means artists are using today to organize, disseminate information, and produce work.  This installment, titled Augmentation, features artist groups that use easily accessible media such as billboards, internet, music, and video.

I'm personally looking forward to Evolution Control Committee.  I worked at community/college radio station KZSU in the late 90's and distinctly remember when ECC's mash-up (before there were mash-ups, mind you) of Public Enemy and Herb Albert and the Tiajuana Brass began getting airplay.  Since then they have continued to impress.

Breakup News

NY Post reporter Anna Jane Grossman runs the brilliant Breakup News with her pal Flint.

Hate married people? Tired of engagement news? Still want to sleep with your ex but don't know if he/she is in a new relationship? Breakup News is the place to get the announcements that really matter.

They're looking for people to answer a short survey, which I'm told "will make you a more attractive, loveable and successful person."

How to rig a drug trial

There's been lots of research comparing manufacturer-sponsored medical research to the old-fashioned, unsponsored kind, and the results are pretty much what'd you expect: "Studies sponsored by pharmaceutical firms were four times more likely to show results favoring the drug being tested than studies funded by other sources." (British Medical Journal, 2003, 326:1167).

How do academics do it and still maintain scientific credibility? The Carlat Report has come up with a handy summary of tips drug companies use to steer clinical trial results in their favor:

1. Make sure your drug has a dosage advantage. When comparing your drug to a competitor's, use an extremely low dose for the competition.

2. Dose their drug to cause side effects. If side effects are more your speed, use an extremely HIGH dose for the competition, thereby lowing its "tolerability."

3. Pick and choose your outcomes. If results don't meet your expectations, keep analyzing the data until you find something.

4. Practice “creative writing” in the abstract. When all else fails, "get creative with the abstract, which is often the only part of the article to be widely read."

See the Carlat Report for more info and examples.

Staring At The Men Who Stare At Goats

Jon Ronson has a new book out and if it's anything like his last, Them: Adventures With Extremists it's sure to be hilarious. The Men Who Stare at Goats is about a secret unit of the US Military who were determined to discover ways that soldiers could become invisible, pass through walls, and kill with their sight.  Given the subject matter, the book could be a paranoid, conspiracy laden, diatribe, or an inquisitive and humorous investigation.  Of course, Ronson could only deliver the latter. 

Ronson, a frequent contributor to NPR and This American Life has some reviews and excerpts of the book posted on his site. 

This post is rated G

The New York Times reports that the Motion Picture Association of America is sending cease-and-desist notices to fan fiction writers for merely rating their stories according to the MPAA's G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17 code:

"We have a right to go after people who use our trademarks without permission, big or small, whenever we find out about them," said John Feehery, executive vice president for the association. "Our ratings are not supposed to be ripped off."

Oh, yeah? Good luck defending that in court, friend. Of course, chances are the MPAA won't have to. Fan fiction sites are switching to different ratings systems, even though MPAA's claim arguably has little basis in the law.

Wendy Seltzer, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argues that the association would have a point only if the fiction sites had claimed that association reviewers had rated the works. Using the ratings as a rough comparison is not a trademark infringement, she said: "It's like saying a beverage tastes like Coke."

Heidi Tandy, a lawyer who is also president of fictionalley.org, an archive of Harry Potter fiction, added that ratings such as PG and R are not exclusive to the association, since they are used by some foreign film boards.

I'm no Howard Zinn.

And this amounts to shameless self-promotion, but here goes. If you've got children, students, relatives, or friends in grades 4 to 6, you might be interested in buying a new book I've co-authored, American History Comic Books. It's 12 mini comic books with a zany time traveler visiting key moments in U.S. history, with background notes, review quizzes, related weblinks, and a biographical glossary. Stay Free-friendly topics include the immigrant experience, women's suffrage, and even a negative panel about Henry Ford. My fellow writer is Joe D'Agnese, who also co-authored this terrific book. Illustrations are by the wonderful Mark Zingarelli, whose work you may recognize from the 2005 WFMU Marathon t-shirt. Thanks for your time.

Depressed? Now you will be...

While working on a comment to my previous post (about New York City's new plan to encourage primary care doctors to screen patients for depression), I discovered that the Bush administration has been pushing to expand mental health screening nationally. Why is this a problem? Well, for one thing, according to the MindFreedom Support Coalition, a human's rights group, pharmaceutical companies, in conjunction with the (scary) American Enterprise Institute, are writing the rules. And those rules call for more coercive treatments such as forced (court-ordered) drugging. For background, check out MindFreedom's FAQ on President Bush and the Shrinking of the USA. (More articles here.)

Starbucks seeks patent on "loyalty" cards

From the Register.co.uk, we learn:

Two Starbucks patent applications seek to protect the electronic loyalty card. One, application (#20050077350), aims to cover a "dual card", a combined credit card and electronic loyalty card for Starbucks own stores, for example.

A second application (#20050080672) by the same applicants seeks to protect the transactional system that exchanges data between the loyalty card and the credit card. Traditionally, the credit card cartel takes mandatory fees from vendors. With this patent, Starbucks looks to turn the tables on this arrangement.

Which reminds me: have you seen the Starbucks Delocator?

(Thanks, Jed Horovitz!)

Hope in the Dark

Author Rebecca Solnit starts Hope in the Dark: Untold Stories, Wild Possibilities off by discussing artist Mark Lombardi. Lombardi was half journalist, half artist. Through intense research he was able to visually chart out the networks that link centers of power together in large scale drawings. He did it so well, the FBI actually came to the Whitney Museum in 2001, viewing his work to aid their investigation of Osama Bin Laden. Lombardi was able to research and synthesize an incredible amount of information in is work, and for complex reasons, he committed suicide in 2000. However, living with the information and detailed understanding of the world he had in his head it's easy to see how depression overcame him.

If you're reading this, you can probably relate to some degree. (Quick, how many embittered old activists or ex-activists do you know?) Solnit's book provides some much needed, healthy perspective for those of us who would like to see some positive change in the world, but are maybe feeling a little frustrated after the last election.

She makes the case for a hope that is grounded in reality, that acknowledges the challenges and the victories of working for change, and posits new ideas on how change really comes about. It's elequently written, reads fairly quickly, and motivates that activist spirit without being unrealistic or sappy. I just finished it earlier this year and highly reccommend it. If you want a preview, there's some articles around that relate to the book, like this one and this one from Common Dreams.

Street Campaign Cost/Benefit Analysis: Bargain!

In a decision reminiscent of IBM's slapped wrists in 2001, San Francisco has fined NBC $103,000 for advertising a television show by spray painting on sidewalks. Hurray for regulation, but why so little? The fine should cost NBC more than putting their message out via traditional, legal advertising methods. I can't imagine NBC didn't calculate for this situation. From their side, isn't $103,000 for a urban marketing campaign a bargain, even if it is paid in the form of fines?

So, you think your job sucks?

I'm basically a believer in legalized prostitution. It is sort of a libertarian-meets-prurient-interest thing. This, on the other hand is going too far: now that prostitution is legal in Germany, women may lose their unemployment benefits for refusing work as prostitutes.

Update: The source for this story, Telegraph.co.uk, misrepresented the facts, which you can read here. (Thanks, Alex!)

Brothels are posting positions in job centers; a refusal to cut off benefits to women who turn down work is grounds for a suit by the brothel against the job center. Prurient interest aside, forcing women into prostitution sounds like rape to me, but I guess if you are in the business you can get pretty cold about it:

"Why shouldn't I look for employees through the job centre when I pay my taxes just like anybody else?" said [brothel owner Tatiana] Ulanova.

It sounds like a reality show in the making. Coming soon to Fox: Conscript Hookers.

Stop frowning sweetie, the customers are complaining. Wipe off your face and get back in the lounge.

(Via Metafilter))

NYC's recipe for depression

New York is beginning a broad, citywide program to encourage primary care doctors to screen people for depression. Participating doctors (and the goal is to have ALL primary care doctors in the city hospital system participating) will ask any patient they consider at risk nine questions, developed in tandem with the RAND corporation: In the past two weeks, how often have you been bothered by trouble concentrating on things? Feeling tired or having little energy? Poor appetite or overeating?

Not making the list: How many hours a week are you working? Do you get along with your boss? Have enough money to pay rent? Recent break-ups? Family problems? You get the idea...

The Experts say screening is necessary because so many depressed people go undiagnosed. And that very well may be, but methinks the dangers of a program like this outweigh the benefits.

(The New York Times)

A Very Brady Infringement?

I promise, not all of my posts will involve ice cream. But I'm getting a sick thrill watching Ben & Jerry's co-opt the Brady Bunch quote "Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!" with their new flavor Marsha Marsha Marshmallow. And it features a Brady-esque tic-tac-toe design. Yet, no mention of the Brady Bunch, or Sherwood Schwartz, on the packaging. I guess that would have involved an exchange of money? Or a contract of some kind? I'm confused and amused. As they said in the British grebo scene: Pop will eat itself.

Report: Kids hospitalized for illiteracy

From Australian Associated Press: A report by the Australian government has found that children’s clinics in hospitals across Australia are being swamped with patients whose only problem is their inability to read. The head of the government’s inquiry into reading, Ken Rowe, said hospital psychology clinics were straining to cope with children seeking medical attention for problems caused by their failure to learn at school. “Hospitals are complaining that their clinics are being filled with kids who are being referred for things like (ADHD),” he told the Sydney Morning Herald. “But once the pediatricians sort out the children’s literacy problems the behaviour problems disappear.”

Napoleon Dynamite rocks the (Idaho state) House

The Idaho state government has unanimously passed a bill praising nerd film Napoleon Dynamite: "WHEREAS tater tots figure prominently in this film thus promoting Idaho's most famous export...WHEREAS, Napoleon's bicycle and Kip's skateboard promote better air quality...WHEREAS, Rico and Kip's Tupperware sales and Deb's keychains and glamour shots promote entrepreneurism and self-sufficiency..."

(Via Peek. Thanks, Evan!)

Brooklyn Brought to You By...

After the Trolley Dodgers’ famous decampment for sunnier shores, the most famous bit of Brooklyn mythography is the one about the canny confidence man who tried to sell to a corn-fed rube the borough’s fabled bridge. These two bits of arcana form the dual basis of Brooklyn’s master narrative; we have been regally robbed, but we can still sell anything to anyone, pull the wool over any sucker’s eyes.

Lately, city fathers have been trying to right baseball’s grievous wrong by exercising this questionable virtue—to recapture both a sports team and Brooklyn’s vanished grandeur through the power of a the shrewd sales pitch. In seeking to replace the dreary railyards at Flatbush and Atlantic with a sparkling commercial nexus and basketball arena, supporters of Bruce Ratner’s real estate boondogle have trumpeted it along economic and aesthetic lines. But the real power of Ratner’s plans lie in their metaphysical mojo, their ability to change the way the rest of the nation thinks about Brooklyn.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made no secret that he sees the Nets plan as a way to sell Brooklyn to the world. In a speech before the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce last year, he painted a sports team as the best form of advertising a city could buy. "People will look at the sports page every day, and they will see Brooklyn," he told the crowd of appreciative entrepreneurs. When Bloomberg and other city officials look at the ambitious blueprint for the Atlantic Yards, they don’t primarily see increased tax revenues, urban renewal, or the reestablishment of civic pride; they see a golden opportunity for free advertising, a chance to build a Brooklyn "brand."

 

The question remains just what sort of Brooklyn the Nets will be selling to the public. While efforts to create a brand for the borough are scattered and unorganized, some pieces of the finished product have emerged in past months. No longer a quaint mix of brownstones and low-rise ethnic enclaves, as captured in so many 70s sitcoms and Spike Lee movies, the new Brooklyn will be a glossy, user-friendly destination for shoppers, culture-lovers and fun-seekers. As the Conde Nast Traveler web site recently put it: "[T]he ‘new’ Brooklyn is all about food, style and class."

Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz has crowned himself the papal figure in the crusade to give the borough’s antiquated image a little modern razzmatazz. Besides pumping enthusiastically for the Atlantic Yards and any other large-scale development, the beep has also publicly mulled over choices for an official Brooklyn catch phrase, staged a star-studded movie premier at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, created a popular restaurant week, and founded a literature council.

But branding a sprawling, maddeningly heterogeneous collection of cultures, people and neighborhoods can prove nettlesome. Chief among the problems is the necessarily reductive nature of branding; in order to appeal to the most people, marketers must seek the lowest common denominator. And when the target market is a Middle America rife with vacation time and excess cash, quite a bit can be left out of the equation. Signs of this can be seen in Markowitz’s failed attempt to put a sign reading, "Leaving Brooklyn: Oy Vey!" over the Manhattan-bound lanes of the Williamsburg Bridge. The NYC Department of Transportation rejected the sign because it was "distracting," but it’s also likely that the sign was just too ethnic, confusing to the Caucasian crowds on holiday. Similar signs reading "Fuhgeddabhout It!", however, remain (perhaps the Jews just need their own version of the Sopranos).

Meanwhile, the Nets themselves may be a vehicle in the "blanding" of Brooklyn as well. The promotion-minded owner of the team recently sold a "presenting sponsorship" to tax accounting firm Jackson-Hewitt, as previously noted in this blog. Now the Garden State hoopsters will be known as the New Jersey Nets presented by Jackson-Hewitt. A representative of the team said that there has been no decision made regarding whether the sponsorship will move to Brooklyn if the Nets do as well, though he did say that it was "a multi-year deal." In other words, there’s a good chance that Brooklyn’s name will become a masthead for a whitebread corporation during basketball season.

And the titans of industry and commerce may be calling the shots when it comes to other aspects of the nascent Brooklyn brand. At a forum moderated by the urban planning group the Center For an Urban Future last week, Joan Bartolomeo, the president of the Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation, and a member of Markowitz’s recently formed Initiative for a Competitive Brooklyn, said that the group was in the process of forming "a very comprehensive task force" that would market the borough as a tourist hotspot and regional center. According to Barolomeo, most of the funding for such an agency would come from the private sector, "because there hasn’t been enough attention paid by the city [government]." How beholden would such an agency be to its sponsors? Will the advertised tourist attractions of Brooklyn be organic, multicultural touchstones, or sanitized, carefully controlled corporate pleasure domes? In the new global era, Brooklyn could be less about Spike Lee and more about Disney.

Increasingly, the many ethnic groups and working class residents that don’t fit the emerging Brooklyn brand are not only ignored, but pushed out. Part of the blame falls on a central component of the Brooklyn brand, the arts. While the influx of artists that made Williamsburg profitable was organic and unexpected, in Fort Greene the city is taking an active role, drawing up a Lincoln-Center-like cultural district around the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). This is not to say that the mayor and his ilk are sticking their heads in the sand entirely. At the unveiling of plans for a new Shakespearean theater in the district, Bloomberg happily noted that property values in the area had doubled in three years, while somberly adding that this trend "created problems of affordable housing." His solution? "We have to build lots more of it."

But as anyone who’s followed the Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning brouhaha knows, building even a small amount of affordable housing is more easily said than done. Forget the difficulties of convincing a developer to volunteer to make less money; do you think tourists will cotton to the prospect of walking by a dense, low-income housing development on the way to a nice dinner?
Nobody will buy that.

George Jetson Gets a Present From Dove

Everyone I talk to adores the new Dove Styling ads in which famous cartoon women all get product-aided makeovers. But Dove Styling apparently confers an unspoken benefit: bigger breasts. Because the hair is so different, your instinctive response is to credit the new haircut for the revamped looks. But these cartoon women have more than a healthy glow in their hair. Each of their bodies has been "improved" in subtle but unmistakable ways. Let's go to the videotape.

Velma Dinkley (who knew she had a last name?) gets rid of her bangs, but also ditches her glasses, loses her neck wattle, stops slouching, and flaunts her new chest.

Marge Simpson also gets a little more zaftig. (The subway ads show her cleavage but it's been removed in these press kit images.) Plus, she adopts a sultry come-hither look. Talk about letting her hair down!

But Jane Jetson. Oh, Jane Jetson! Already a size 0, Jane gets fairly substantial implants, which Dove must have paid for because there is no way that Mr. Spacely would have paid George enough to afford them. As the press release says, Jane Jetson will have George seeing stars with gravity-defying volume on the cutting edge of style. Gravity-defying volume, indeed. The way Jane is throwing her head back, she seems to be reaping the benefits already.

As for Wilma Flintstone, not much change. But we already knew that there was a hottie under that bun just screaming to get out.

Advertisers: Trix aren't for kids

"The twinkie driving the bus is CLEARLY an adult," said a Hostess spokesperson.

The makers of Hostess Twinkies, Nestle Crunch, and Little Debbie cakes have come up with an unexpected response to critics who blame them for marketing junk food to kids: denial.

"Hostess is not a kids' brand," says Jacques Roizen, chief marketing officer for Interstate Bakeries Corp., maker of Hostess snack cakes and fruit pies. "A majority of our snacks are consumed by adults."

The target customer for Baby Ruth candy bars? "Definitely adult men," says Barb Skoog, spokeswoman for Nestlé SA.

What about the Hostess Twinkes sold last year with green filling, in conjunction with the video release of Shrek 2? Roizen doesn't consider that marketing to kids because the movie "appeals to all ages."

In its defense, Roizen's company also claims that 53% of households that purchase Twinkies have no children. Even if you accept that as true, so what?  No doubt a large percentage of adults who eat Twinkies first developed the habit when they were kids. I mean, that's one of the main reasons so many companies target kids in the first time: once you've sold them on your product, you've got a nice, long period to reap the gains.

(Via the Wall Street Journal)

Snack Foods' New Marketing Sweet Spot: Grown-Ups

By JANET ADAMY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 12, 2005; Page B1

Hostess Twinkies aren't really for kids. Neither are Nestlé Crunch bars or Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies, according to the companies that make them. The marketers say they have a better audience: grown-ups.

With food companies being targeted in the growth of childhood obesity, some are shifting their advertising strategies. They're insisting that their products -- staples of school lunchboxes and trick-or-treat offerings -- are really geared more toward moms and dads.

In the 1950s, the puppet Howdy Doody pitched creme-filled Twinkies on the classic children's television show. Now, "Hostess is not a kids' brand," says Jacques Roizen, chief marketing officer for Interstate Bakeries Corp., maker of Hostess snack cakes and fruit pies. "A majority of our snacks are consumed by adults."

The target customer for Baby Ruth candy bars? "Definitely adult men," says Barb Skoog, spokeswoman for Nestlé SA. McKee Foods Corp., maker of Little Debbie Nutty Bars and Oatmeal Creme Pies, says women ages 18 to 45 are its key buyers -- even though they're eaten by consumers of all ages. A spokeswoman for the company, Ruth Garren, points out that it gets letters praising the treats from nursing-home residents. "A lot of adults have them in their lunches," Ms. Garren says.

Some people aren't buying it. "That's almost laughable," says Sen. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who has blamed junk-food ads for contributing to rising childhood obesity rates. He estimates the food industry spent $10 billion last year advertising directly to children. (See related article.)

Referring to promotions that employ characters from the "Shrek" and "Scooby-Doo" movies, he says, "I don't know that they would really use these if they were really marketing to adults."

Sen. Harkin plans to introduce two pieces of legislation if food companies don't on their own create new guidelines for advertising to children. One would give the Federal Trade Commission the power to prevent food companies from advertising junk food to kids. The other would grant the U.S secretary of agriculture authority to curb junk-food advertising in schools.

For years, food companies have unabashedly pitched junk food to children, running sugary-cereal spots during cartoons and tying kids' movies to fast-food promotions. But rising childhood obesity rates have turned food makers into targets for criticism -- and made them increasingly careful about their marketing.
[Marvel]
Hostess ads once used Marvel heroes.

   

"I've never seen our clients more sensitive to the issues around kid marketing," says George Carey, president of Just Kid Inc., which helps companies develop strategies to reach the youth market. Many companies that can profitably aim snacks and treats at adults rather than children are doing so, he says.

Kraft Foods Inc.'s announcement in January that it would stop advertising Oreo cookies and other treats to kids under 12 has put the food giant's competitors on the defensive. General Mills Inc. and Kellogg Co., two big children's advertisers, so far have not announced plans to cut back on marketing aimed at children.

Still, food companies have been quietly tweaking certain pitches over the past several years to deflect complaints. In November, Masterfoods USA said it would stop advertising that its Shrek Colors M&M's Minis candies were available "for a limited time" because it created a sense of eating urgency. The change came after the Council of Better Business Bureaus Inc.'s Children's Advertising Review Unit, a watchdog group, asked Masterfoods to modify the advertisement.

CARU also asked H.J. Heinz Co. to eliminate the line "The more you scarf, the better your chances" from promotions for a 2003 sweepstakes for the company's Bagel Bites frozen snacks. CARU was concerned the slogan encouraged kids to overeat. Heinz said the promotion was aimed at consumers over the age of 12, but dropped the line anyway.

Food companies are realizing that it's sometimes easier and more effective to appeal to adults, either as gatekeepers for their children or as the end consumers. Nestlé was aiming to win over grown-ups buying for their kids when it put Scooby-Doo characters on packages of popsicles the company launched this month, says Steven DuPuis, president and creative director of DuPuis, a branding and packaging firm that helped create the box. Parents are familiar with the cartoon because it was popular during the 1970s, he says.

The decision at Interstate Bakeries, Kansas City, Mo., to shift Hostess advertising toward adults comes after decades of campaigns that hooked kids on golden sponge cake and creamy fillings.

In the 1970s, Continental Baking Co., which owned the Hostess brands then, hired illustrators from DC Comics and Marvel Comics to create strips inside comic books in which Batman, Wonder Woman, the Incredible Hulk and other heroes used snack cakes and pies to fend off villains. The comic books' target audience at the time was boys 8 to 13 years old, says Bob Rozakis, a former DC Comics writer who wrote some of the Hostess strips.

Hostess lost some of its luster in the 1980s when new owner Ralston Purina Co. limited advertising to magazines and in-store promotions. When Interstate Bakeries bought the company in 1995, the Hostess brand had missed at least one generation of kids due to the weak marketing, says Steve Gordon, senior vice president at Campbell Mithun, Interstate Bakeries' current ad agency.

The following year, Interstate Bakeries began pouring money into a new ad campaign to win back kids, using bears and raccoons as its ad characters. In one spot, a bear mistakes a yellow mobile home for a Twinkie and rips off its roof in search of the filling. The ads aired on the Nickelodeon TV channel and other networks during the late afternoon. As recently as last summer, the company announced it had chosen 10 finalists -- ages 6 to 11 -- to design a 75th anniversary Twinkie box.

Now the baker says it's retooling its marketing. New managers took over at Interstate Bakeries in September after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Research showed that 53% of households that purchase Twinkies have no children. Adult males represent a big portion of the consumer base because they grab Ho-Hos and fruit pies when they stop at convenience stores. So the company decided to cut back on campaigns aimed at kids, says Mr. Roizen, the marketing executive.

He says the changes weren't prompted by a desire to be more socially responsible. For Interstate Bakeries, advertising to kids "would just make bad business sense," he says.

This year the company is considering running advertisements in People magazine and on daytime soap operas to reach older consumers and moms who might buy products for their kids. It also is producing an adult-oriented cookbook to mark Twinkies' 75th birthday and has been promoting recipes for Twinkie wedding cakes. The company has no plans to buy advertisements on the Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon or other kid-oriented channels, Mr. Roizen says. Last fall, the company sold Twinkies with green filling tied to the video release of the film "Shrek 2." But Mr. Roizen says that wasn't marketing to kids because the film appeals to all ages.

With a limited postbankruptcy marketing budget, Interstate Bakeries has been relying on free publicity to reach consumers. Mr. Roizen says the company has appealed to television shows for coverage of the Twinkie's 75th birthday this month. Yesterday, it scored with a mention on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Massive Attacks

It really was only a matter of time before somebody decided we needed an agency devoted to filling up video games with advertisements. While sports games have long mimicked the signage in stadiums and ball fields, I'm going to have to agree with this guy's sentiment in that I wouldn't want to "pick up a sword and have it read Nike on the side." The author of this press release wants everybody not to worry that the ads will overtake the gameplay and prove to be distracting. That may be true now while they inch it into the games, but here's betting it's only a matter of a few years before we're unwillingly subjected to a video version of The Twenty. My only is hope is some enterprising kid will develop a hack for the next Wolfenstein that lets you blast Pepsi machines and Reebok billboards along with everything else.

The Game of Advertising

I've long argued that the teaching media literacy in schools can do more harm than good, given the people leading the charge. Now here comes Hasbro, offering a free board game about advertising to primary schools.

The Game of Life is part of a UK-based industry effort called Media Smart, led by McDonald's, Procter and Gamble, Mattel, Kellogg's, Masterfoods, and Nickelodeon, along with Hasbro, to teach "advertising awareness"--or, alternately, "media literacy"--in schools (as if the problem is that kids aren't "aware").

New food pyramid brought to you by Porter Novelli

The U.S. government has hired none other than McDonald's public relations firm, Porter Novelli, to come up with an icon to replace the food pyramid.  Yes, the suits at Porter Novelli may represent the fast-food giant, as well as Masterfoods, M&M's, Krispy Kreme, and other companies with tentacles in the food business, but--as far as the Dept. of Agriculture is concerned--that just means they're experts.

The New York Times has helpfully compiled a few of the suggestions that Porter Novelli's past and current clients have made for the food pyramid:

Almond Board of California: "Including almonds in the new icon, will encourage consumers to choose a food that they already enjoy and to make a nutrient-dense, heart-heathy food choice."

Campbell Soup Company recommends using a bowl instead of a pyramid: "A consumer's preference for a circular shape is consistent with USDA's 1992 findings, where consumers found a bowl shape to be more appealing than a pyramid." Also argues that processed foods should be given a better standing.

Dow Agrosciences: Currently, all fats and oils are lumped together at the top of the pyramid in the "use sparingly" section, whereas healthful unsaturated oils should appear near the bottom of the pyramid or in the 'consume regularly' section.

April 10, 2005
When a Food Marketer Devises Nutrition Advice
The New York Times, By KIM SEVERSON

Candy lovers from 200 countries voted on a new M&M's color in 2002.

Purple won, and hundreds of newspapers and television stations reported the news. Web sites buzzed. Jay Leno worked it into his monologue on "The Tonight Show."

The campaign, regarded as a masterwork of food marketing, was created by Porter Novelli, one of the world's largest and most successful public relations companies.

Now the company is selling a different kind of product. Within the month, the Agriculture Department is expected to present a new icon to help Americans interpret the recently released federal dietary guidelines. For the company's work in designing the icon (which may or may not retain the shape of the current food guide pyramid) and for related tasks, Porter Novelli will receive nearly $2.5 million.

At a time when the government is increasing its use of public relations techniques to promote its agenda, its hiring a company with a stable of food industry clients to sell the national nutrition plan has some public health advocates concerned.

Government nutrition guidelines and the icon that illustrates them are more than keys to healthy eating. They can be powerful marketing tools for the food industry; a favorable nod toward one food group or another can result in millions of dollars in sales, food manufacturers say. They also influence federal food programs costing $46 billion a year, including food stamps and meals for schoolchildren.

Several former or current Porter Novelli clients offered formal comment on the guidelines and the new icon at government hearings last year. The Campbell Soup Company suggested that processed foods be given better standing than in the current pyramid. The Dole Food Company said fruits and vegetables should have a starring role.

And as soon as the guidelines were released in January, Porter Novelli account executives used them as a hook to promote client products like California almonds.

The company's current and former clients also include McDonald's and the Snack Food Association. And while no one expects Porter Novelli to subvert the government's nutrition message by giving its own clients' products a bump, some nutritionists and public health advocates worry about subtle ways in how the message is shaped. The government's main tool for defining a healthful diet, they say, should be kept out of the hands of marketers with close ties to the industry.

"You have a company on one hand pushing McDonald's or almonds or whatever, and on the other providing objective advice on government nutrition programs," said Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group that frequently criticizes food manufacturers. "It could lead Porter Novelli to just be positive in the presentation or to tone down criticisms. It's very subtle, and it may not be bad in a way: the almond might be a good nut. But it really does pose a conflict of interest."

Government health officials say hiring a company like Porter Novelli is a smart choice. Porter Novelli invented the pyramid graphic, which was released in 1992, and its experience with both food marketing and health-oriented social marketing campaigns just may be the right combination to persuade ever-fatter Americans to change how they eat.

"If this kind of marketing is what the consumers expect to see, if this is what they see everywhere else, we've got to have it," said Eric Hentges, director of the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion at the Agriculture Department.

A government-appointed board of scientists and doctors wrote the guidelines last year, reviewing medical studies and hearing testimony from virtually every major food processor and commodity group.

Many of those same groups then offered public comment in the next step of the dietary guidelines process, which was to determine whether to keep the pyramid configuration and how otherwise to shape the government's message.

Porter Novelli employees have worked closely with federal officials on both parts of the process. At the same time, they have worked with interests that have tried to influence it. The company's executives say a fire wall dividing the government effort from the corporate interests, and the various corporate interests from one another, is maintained by confidentiality agreements, strict separation of the teams working on various campaigns and a number of protocols and computer safeguards on the flow of information.

"Porter Novelli is totally open with our public health clients about our commercial work in health and in food," said Rob Gould, a senior partner and managing director of the Washington office. Besides, Mr. Gould said, the company's job in this case is only to sell what the government has decided to promote.

"It is not our role to determine the science or actual public health recommendations," he said. "What our public health clients are looking for us to do is translate those scientific recommendations in a way that consumers can understand and make use of in their lives."

Concerns over the food industry's influence on the process have arisen before. When Porter Novelli invented the first pyramid in the late 1980's, milk and meat producers complained that their products were placed in such a way that people might be discouraged from consuming them. Other groups complained, too, and the Agriculture Department delayed its release until 1992.

To a large extent, that earlier effort has not worked. Although more than 80 percent of Americans now recognize the pyramid, few use it. Since the early 1990's the number of states with serious obesity problems has risen to all 50 from just 4, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Still, federal officials in charge of creating dietary advice say they are ill equipped to dispense it without help from marketing professionals.

"Putting together the frameworks for what has to be good federal policy on diet and health is what we do," said Mr. Hentges of the Agriculture Department's guidelines project. "We do not have expertise in all the mechanical systems to run through and do focus groups or Web testing."

Mr. Hentges said the project's integrity had been protected by a cumbersome process requiring dozens of government employees to review all the dietary guidelines material, including a consumer guide, the new icon, pamphlets, CD-ROM's and Web-based educational material designed by Porter Novelli.

Missions that might be considered conflicting are not new for Porter Novelli. For example, it has worked for both the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and for Guinness stout and Johnnie Walker Scotch.

On the other hand, the goals of a commercial client and a public health client can blend in a way that benefits both. For example, both Dole and the National Cancer Institute pay Porter Novelli to create and market a campaign to get people to eat more fruits and vegetables.

Whatever the benefit of a particular food, though, that is just the kind of partnership that makes some public health advocates nervous.

"How much of a corporate message is behind the government's message?" said Harold M. Goldstein, executive director of the nonprofit California Center for Public Health Advocacy, which is fighting to get junk food out of schools.

Porter Novelli was founded in 1972 by William D. Novelli and Jack Porter, advertising men who worked together to market the Peace Corps and to get President Richard M. Nixon re-elected. From the start, mixing traditional marketing with government-financed social marketing was central to the firm's success, says Mr. Novelli, who left in 1990 and is now chief executive of AARP. The company has since become a subsidiary of the advertising and marketing giant Omnicom Group and has offices in 60 countries.

One of Porter Novelli's earliest clients was the Agriculture Department, and since 1997 the company has obtained $59 million worth of federal contracts.

"Sometimes you can marry those interests," Mr. Novelli said of the government-corporate mix. "It's about synergy. It benefits both clients. Consumers are not purists. They are not monolithic."

Wizard People screening in NYC - May 31

Stay Free! is pleased to announce that we'll be screening Brad Neely's Wizard People, Dear Reader, here in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY, on Tuesday, May 31st, at Southpaw (5th Ave. between Sterling and St. John's). This will be part of the release party for our upcoming issue, Stay Free! #24. Details to follow... If you're not yet familiar with Wizard People and Warner Brothers' attempts to shut it down, check out this NPR feature.
 

Stussy cries trademark infringement

The clothier Stussy has filed suit against another clothing company, Freshjive, for parodying its logo. The funny thing is: Stussy has itself made a habit of toying with other companys' trademarks. Some of the more popular Stussy designs, for example, are takeoffs on Chanel's interlocking C's and Louis Vuitton's now-ubiquitous print. So why go after the little guy who -- in even the most cynical reading -- is only following in Stussy's footsteps? Rick Klotz of Freshjive discusses Stussy's claims here.

(Thanks, Nick Reville)

NYC Ad Creep Hits a Speed Bump

Outdoor "ad creep" in New York hit a new low with the recent leasing of a 15,000 square foot section of the Flatiron Building to disposable clothing specialist H&M. Now the city's Buildings Department is ordering the removal of the giant ad because it was installed without a permit and poses safety issues. While it's a relief the city is taking action against this monstrosity, the underlying issue is unchanged: outdoor advertising is spreading to every conceivable surface in the city, bringing us ever closer to a BladeRunner-esque nightmare. Those who would like to keep the luxury of being able to look at normal city objects (buildings, sidewalks, the sky) without having products hawked to them might do well to seize this moment to voice support for some kind of restraint on outdoor advertising.

While you're at it, give the creeps at H&M a call and tell them you won't be buying any of their $12 jackets until they take down their Flatiron ad:

H & M Hennes & Mauritz LP
47 West 34th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, N.Y. 10001
Tel: +1.212.564.9922

Cookie Monster is on a diet

Seriously. ('cos he's gotta make room for McDonalds burgers)

(Thanks, Yaniv Eidelstein)

Corporate Vocabulary

Outback Steakhouse has a campaign promoting 2 exciting new possibilites at their restaurant chain. "Call Ahead Seating" and "Curbside Take-Away." With "Call Ahead Seating," you call the restaurant, give them your name, and then when you arrive you get seated faster! Incredible! With the other, "Curbside Take-Away," you can call in your order, pick up your food, and drive away. Finally, the antiquated concepts of "reservations" and "take-out" have been brought into the 21st century.

Stay Free! t-shirts for sale

In a renewed quest to financially justify the time I spend on Stay Free!, I've started a t-shirt "shop" via CafePress.com (which, btw, I recommend). The Panexa shirt was taken from a popular drug ad parody by my co-blogger, Jason Torchinsky. Here's what the back says. (People have asked us to bring back the Panexa ad banners, but they don't really fit on the site; you're more than welcome to steal, though)  The other shirt designs -- with the exception of the Stay Free! logo tee -- use parody logos my people came up with for Stay Free! #20....well, except the Coke thing, which someone sent us many years ago (please get it touch if you're out there).

A field guide to recycled Wal-Marts

Wal-Mart is notorious for moving into small towns, aggressively driving competitors out of business, then packing up and leaving once headquarters decides the superstore sales aren't super enough. Towns are then left not only with an attenuated local economy, but a gigantic box of a building.

Julia Christensen has documented how some places have dealt with the remnants of big-box stores such as Wal-Mart, turning them into churches, medical centers, even court houses. Her project reminds me of Liz Clayton's Not Fooling Anybody, which does a similar thing for for fast food restaurants and other chains.

New rule: critics can use trademarks in domain names

Thanks to an important new ruling, a critical use of a trademark in a web domain name is entitled to fair use. In the case, decided by the Ninth Circuit, Bosley Medical Institute  sued Michael Kremer for starting a website -- www.BosleyMedical.com -- critical of the hair resporation company. But the court ruled for Kremer, allowing him to keep his site (which is especially fortunate since Bosley Medical, with its penchant for false advertisementing and other fraudulent claims, is the party that should be sued).

Naturally, there are qualifiers, as our man Fred von Lohmann explains. For example, the ruling only applies to noncommercial sites that have no commercial ads or links to commercial sites.

Still, this is good news from a court system that hasn't delivered much of it lately. Maybe this will even help the poor guy whose Wal-Mart blog, Always Low Prices, won him a cease and desist from Sam Walton's thugs.

(Via Copyfight)

Clear Channel now color-coding music

The exciting new WFMU blog informs us that Clear Channel has started color-coding music, a la the Department of Homeland Security:

"Blue" songs are "no problem if aired from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.," while "Yellow" songs "should be reviewed for indecency issues if a PD or air personality wants to air it between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m." "Orange" songs "cannot be played from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m." If "Yellow"' or "Orange" songs are aired, the station's GM and PD will get an e-mail informing them of a possible problem if played outside of safe-harbor hours, but the decision to the air song will remain with the local programming staff. (Original source: FMQB Radio Industry News)

Oneify?

It seems the barriers between art and design have always been strained. One could argue Michaelangelo was basically doing graphic design work for the church when they financed his ceiling painting in the Sistine Chapel. Luckily, nowadays the art world at least seems to try to seperate itself from the world of commerce. The disitinction in the motive for making between art and graphic design is critical. As Bertolt Brecht put it, the more art aligns itself with commerce, the less art is able to take a critical voice.

Most people know when they are looking at a designed corporate campaign and when they are looking at an art object. People don't look to ad campaigns to fill the need that art fills and convey the meanings that art conveys. But advertising would love to try. As advertising gets more deperate to 'break through the clutter' we've see an increase in saturation as well as advertising's attempt to ease its way into different aspects of our culture - through sponsorship, naming, whisper campaigns and so on. Big business has begun to sponsor art exhibitions, companies like Altoids/Phillip Morris, Mercedes Benz, banks, etc., love to get their names on museum walls for the publicity, good will, and tax incentives.

Enter the latest attempt to crowbar business into the art world and youth culture:Oneify.

This campaign offers a manipulative blend of potentially good things like skate and art subcultures, distinctive graphics, and unity messages, with total crap things like Pepsi, chemical sweetners, marketing, and co-option.

Some quick background... the designer, Geoff McFetridge, is part of the Beautiful Losers art exhibit which features (relatively) big name skate/street artists and is currently travelling around the nation. The show has been criticiz