Seems the President is pissed off at his liberal base….for expecting him to govern on the same principles that he campaigned on. New Wednesday webcast to follow…
Category : Free Floating Hostility, Politics, Video of the Day
Category : Main Stream Media, Rick Perry
Anyone caught the George W. Bush book tour? It’s hard to miss; he’s been on CNN with Candy Crowley, on MSNBC with Joe “Ass Face” Scarborough, and everywhere else in between. And somehow the years have been good to W. He looks leaner, younger, and has even improved his diction. Sure, he still says “inny” instead of “any”, is still worried about “big Gubmint”, and still wants to privatize social security, but the Hat looks like he finally bought some Cattle. And, as you’ve probably guessed from the above video, I’m not talking about the former President, I’m talking about the new, shinier version of W: Governor Rick Perry of Texas. If you haven’t caught his act, think Josh Brolin in the Oliver Stone flop “W”.
Yes, this newly minted Bush seems a tad smarter than W, but don’t be fooled. Perry hates homos, wants to outlaw abortion, loves capital punishment, believes global warming science is bullshit, thinks the states should decide who gets to sit at the lunch counter, and his version of religious intolerance rivals that of the Taliban.
Until now, Perry is probably best remembered for issuing an executive order mandating that Texas girls receive HPV vaccinethat protects against some strains of the human papilloma virus, a cause of cervical cancer. At the time of the order, Gardasil, a newly approved drug manufactured by Merck was the only FDA approved HPV vaccine. The move made national headlines, and apparent financial connections between Merck and Perry were reported by news outlets, such as a $6,000 campaign contribution and Merck’s hiring of former Perry Chief of Staff Mike Toomey to handle its Texas lobbying work.
But that was then, and this is now, and now Perry is riding the crest of the Republican congressional take-over, and a new book, “Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington“. Perry was on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” Monday night fielding softball questions, spewing his opinions about deregulation and lower taxes, and yukking it up with the host. ( See yesterday’s blog about Stewarts sudden veer to the right.) That’s when it occurred to me that Perry is just a slicker version of Bush, and in a suddenly more demented America, that’s a threatening prospect. President Palin? President Gingrich? President Romney? Come on! This over-achieving cracker would wipe the floor with all of them.
Oh yeah, the actual George W. Bush is pimping his book on national TV, too, but that Bush appears, if possible, even dimmer and self-delusional than I remembered, sanitizing the crime scene of his presidency with revisionist lies and self-aggrandizing platitudes. For me at least, to go back down that road with Bush is infuriating, nauseating, and unwatchable. But to not keep a keen eye on Rick Perry in the next couple of years would be unthinkably naive.
Kieth Olbermann returns to his MSNBC show this evening after a two day suspension for violating company policy by donating to political campaigns in the recent midterm election. The timing of Olbermann’s suspension seemed wierd, given the recent flap between Keith and Jon Stewart over Stewart’s implication during his recent Sanity Rally that lefty commentators are just as divisive as righties, that MSNBC is no better than Fox.
There’s an old adage in law that goes “If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have neither the law or the facts on your side, pound the table.” While right wing turds like Glenn Beck have made millions by pounding the table, as a rule, Olbermann pounds the truth (and only occasionally the table), and his umbrage over Stewart’s “false equivalency” is well founded. But aside from that, there’s something else that’s stinky about this whole affair. Here’s a brief chronology of the recent events:
Stewart hosts his weekend event in D.C., partially in response to Beck’s ego-fest. He calls out “cable news” as part of the problem.
Olbermann responds the following Monday, expressing his astonishment that he has been lumped in with Beck and Bill O’Reilly. As a cop to Stewart’s claims, he “suspends” his Worst Person in the World segment because, apparently, it’s considered too vindictive.
Stewart returns to the studio and, 2 nights later, interviews Fox news clown Chris Wallace. While lavishing praise on Fox for their election coverage, he refers to MSNBC as the equivalent of double A baseball:
“It’s interesting that in some ways, MSNBC—by trying to maybe become a version of that… You cannot defeat Fox by becoming what they say you are. If Fox’s game is, “the media’s biased against Republicans,” all you are doing is giving them that field. The only way you can defeat them is through, like, an earned credibility, not an earned partnership. They are making a mistake by becoming equivalent to Fox rather than becoming a brand new journalistic organization.”
On Friday of the same week, HBO smirkster Bill Maher jumps into the fray, defending Olbermann:
“Keith Olbermann is right when he says he’s not the equivalent of Glenn Beck. One reports facts the other one is very close to playing with his poop. And the big mistake of modern media has been this notion of balance for balance’s sake. That the Left is just as violent and cruel as the Right…there’s a difference between a mad man and a madman.”
Then on Sunday, it was announced that Olbermann would be suspended indefinitely and without pay for his unauthorized campaign contributions. (A further irony is that Olbermann has practically owned the story about undisclosed contributions to the Chamber of Commerce that have been used to smear Dem candidates.)
Ok, so maybe this all adds up to a series of inconsequential coincidences, but am I the only person that finds it a bit odd that the 3 most prominent progressive voices in the media engage in a week long pissing contest, culminating in Olbermann’s suspension? Keep in mind that MSNBC’s bosses, General Electric, are waist deep in the military-industrial complex and are soon to merge with Comcast, headed by long-time Bush suck-up Steven Burke. And in addition to MSNBC, G.E. also brings us the pro-corporatist creepfest CNBC, featuring a steadydiet of loud mouth Wall Street shills like Jim Cramer and Larry Kudlow.
Maybe all this was merely the collision of massive egos and maybe MSNBC was, coincidently, merely enforcing in-house rules about campaign contributions. But even so, the terrain has shifted. The recent Republican congressional ass whoppin’ seems to have everyone looking over their shoulders and hedging bets. Lessons have been taught and lessons have been learned. My bet is that the “Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” will be striking a more “fair and balanced” approach for the forseeable future. And that Fox News, further emboldened, will continue to pound the table.
Category : david stockman, limbaugh, Main Stream Media, Recession
I decided to take a brief hiatus from the Depression Blog to reflect on the 2010 Mid-term election, specifically how the rabble became so intellectually softened by propaganda and utter bullshit that they actually voted into office a cabal of no-nothing wretches, pseudo-intellectualclowns, and corporate bag men. This will take the form of a tutorial that requires a certain amount of patience on your part, largely because I want you to repress your gag instinct and read and reflect upon the post-election words of the country’s foremost corporate bag man, Rush Limbaugh. I will not force you to chug this toxic kool-aid in one huge gulp but instead have broken it down into digestible little shooters, diluted by my comments. The following bloviation is excerpted from Limbaugh’s November 3rd radio program.
Well, I had a chance to listen to just a little bit of the Obama press conference. Jake Tapper, ABC, asked Obama about the compromise that he might make on extending the Bush tax cuts. Right now, of course, the tax cuts will eliminate, stop for everybody, $250,000 or more, and maybe everybody’s taxes will be raised. But believe me, there’s no tax cuts on the table. And Jake Tapper said, (paraphrasing) “Would you compromise and say people who make a million dollars a year will not see their tax decrease, tax cut sunsetted?” And I started thinking, where’s all this talk of rich equaling $250,000 a year, a million a year, where does all this start? What right does Obama have to sit there and proclaim that people who earn X are gonna be punished with Y, people who earn less than X won’t be punished with Y? Do you notice how easy it is to fall into the premise trap that the left sets?
Here, Limbaugh lays out his basic argument, that to be taxed at a higher incremental rate is tantamount to “punishment”, a modern scheme cooked up by a coalition of media stooges (Jake Tapper) and “leftists” (Obama, et al) who collectively hate the rich. However, progressive taxation, or at least the concept of progressive taxation, can be traced to Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations”, published in 1776. The initial use of progressive taxation goes back to 1862 (to finance the Civil War) and has been a permanent part of U.S. tax policy since the turn of the last century. With Reagan’s 1986 Tax Reform Act, the highest rate went from 50% to 28%, the lowest since 1916. But Limbaugh is shrewd enough to know that the tea baggers and ditto heads, despite all their incessant babbling about the the “founding fathers” and the constitution, don’t know shit about the constitution and couldn’t care less about learning anything.
Looked at within the prism of liberty and freedom, as our founding documents spell out, the Declaration, the Constitution, in nowhere in any of our founding documents was it ever said that people earning X would be punished for it. It was never said in our founding documents that people earning X would share a greater burden of funding the government than people who didn’t. Where does all this talk start? Because all this is nothing more than a direct attack on liberty, a direct attack on freedom and it creates class envy and resentment and anger between the classes, between people of different income groups. So all of a sudden we’re faced with a possibility here of the Bush tax cuts ending for people who earn $250,000 a year or more. Well, why are we even discussing it in the first place? What did those people do?
Of course, “What did these people do?” reiterates the “punishment” claim, that the rich are being targeted with slightly higher tax rates, not because they can more easily and comfortably afford them, but because of “class envy”. And there is no mention in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of “innocent until proven guilty”, marriage, congressional districts, The United States Air Force, immigration, paper money, executive order, and any number of other modern day realities.
What have they done that resulted in this irresponsibility in Washington? Nothing! The people who earn $250 or 500,000 or a million are in fact the people who are investing in this country and the private sector hiring other people, producing products and services that allow for the country’s economy to grow and for people to have jobs and to earn higher wages. The federal government, the state government cannot and does not create wealth. All it can do is destroy it. All it can do is confiscate it. And what we’re doing is discussing the proper level of servitude.
This is Limbaugh’s pitch to the $40K-a-year income earners who comprise most of his audience and the Tea Party in general. What’s in it for them if people making over $250,000 get a tax break? This is a reiteration of the “trickle down theory”, that a higher economic tide raises all the little boats in the harbor. It’s a cute and reassuring theory despite the fact that it is utter bullshit and has been proven to be time and time again, specifically following Reagan’s massive cuts in the 80′s and George W. Bush’s tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy in 2001 and 2003. Hell, David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director, has made a personal crusade of exposing the folly of trickle down. But, again, proving that a lie repeated ultimately becomes the truth to the uninformed, this reality is lost on the ‘baggers.
Now, who made Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or any Democrat, I don’t care, any Democrat, who made them the decider on what anybody should make and then what level of taxation they should pay? Who made them the deciders on what we should eat? Who made them the decider of what kind of lightbulbs we have in our homes? Who made them the deciders on the kind of car we should drive? Who made them the deciders on what kinda house we live in? Who made them the deciders of when and where we can and can’t turn our lights on? Who made them the deciders of who loses how much of their freedom? Who gave them that power? It doesn’t come from the Constitution. The Constitution does not say the Democrat Party gets to decide which car people drive, which lightbulb they have, what foods they can and can’t eat, and what lights they can’t turn off or on at what time of year. The Constitution does not say that the Democrat Party gets to decide any of this.
I guess the short answer to this question would be the election of 2008. A longer answer would be that lead-based paint, arsenic tainted drinking water, small pox, mesothelioma, sweat shops, and massive oil spills are not mentioned in the Consitution either. In Limbaugh’s world, we should all have the “freedom” eat the paint, drink the water, and breath in the asbestos. But, except for the fact that Democrats have been in control of Washington for the past two years, what any of this has to do with tax cuts is lost on me.
So now we have a guy who is the least qualified in any room he walks into being asked a question by an equally incompetent reporter, “Mr. President, are you willing to compromise, people that earn $500,000 a year will be able to keep more of what they earn, will you even go as high as one million?” And I’m watching this, who the hell are either of you people to decide this? How did I end up as an American with a guy who doesn’t even like my country telling me how I have to live? How did that happen? How did I end up with a guy who does not even respect the founding documents of this country, how did I end up — how did we all end up — with that kind of guy telling us how immoral and unjust we are?
This is really the gist of Limbaugh’s “argument”, not that breathing second-hand smoke and eating double bacon cheeseburgers equates with “freedom”, but that Obama is nothing other than an illegitimate, America-loathing, leftist imbecile. The “least qualified in any room”? Has this lard bucket ever heard of Sharon Angle, Christine O’Donnell, or Carl Paladino? Or for that matter, Jim Demint, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, the “birthers”, or any other of the intellectually impaired bobble-heads who comprise the Tea Party movement?
Let me tell you something, President Obama. You can reject it all you want. But you’ve done it. And we know you’re happy you’ve done it. You might want people to think you’re not happy about the direction the country is going, but if you really were unhappy about it you’d do something to stop it. Instead, you’re doubling down on it. You reject the idea your policies have taken the country in reverse? Where the hell have your policies taken us? You happily preside over a nation in decline. You have told the world no longer will the US population lead the world economy. Ain’t gonna happen anymore. Right. It wasn’t AIG-Lehman Brothers-Goldman Sachs, Bush’s god-forsaken trillion dollar wars, toxic mortgages, or a world-wide economic melt-down that created this mess. It was the Nigerian Muslim fascist, Obama and his America-hating policies. And now that the Republicans are back in charge, the “temporary” Bush tax cuts will be perpetuated, “Obama Care” will be repealed, and Wall Street will be de-regulated.
And after two more years of incessant right wing lies coming from corporate suck-ups like Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck, the White House and Senate will be safely back in the hands of the oligarchs, brought to power by a gaggle of useful idiots. And the shining City on the Hill will be restored to its former glory.
Ah, Freedom!
(Please feel free to register and comment @ www.stacytaylor.com )
Category : Main Stream Media, muslims, Politics
As DrinkingwithBob so artfully put it, are you freakin’ kiddin’ me?! This guy speaks for me. Two freakin’ mosques already near “ground zero” and another one on the way?! What the freak, you freakin’ freak-wads: this is Hallowed Ground, like Arlington National Cemetery, like Gettysburg, like the set of “American Chopper”! Just take a look, you freedom hating, elitist, surrender monkeys:
That’s not just a freakin’ hole in the freakin’ ground, Abdul, that’s a freakin’ hole in freakin’ hallowed ground! But not everybody in this great country is gonna roll over and play dead before the Islam-o-fascist-jihadist towel heads. Bryan Fischer of The American Family Association has it nailed:
“Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero.This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.”
And I learned a few other things while recently searching the freakin’ web! For example, did you know that muslims who work at the Pentagon are allowed to pray to Allah, like, 500 times a day? There’s your freakin’ tax dollars at work for you. Now, I’m not saying that the Pentagon is exactly hallowed ground, because after all, it was designed along the lines of a pentagram, the universal occultist symbol for One World Government domination. But still. I’m just sayin’.
Bunch of freakin’ ‘tards. I can’t freakin’ believe it. What happened to this country? What happened to my America? Go back to freakin’ Libya, where you were born, Barrack Hussein Obama!
Category : Latest Outrages, Main Stream Media, Uncategorized
The “Dog Days of Summer” have as much to do with actual dogs as CAT Scan has to do with cats. The term actually refers to the ancient miscalculation that the “dog star” Sirius is closest to the sun during July and August and therefore is responsible for the year’s hotest weather. Nevertheless, I can always count on some dog “controversies” to come sniffin’ around this time of the year, collect their share of fleas, pee on the collective media carpet, then role back over and go to sleep.
Leading the list this year is the canonization of the latest “folk hero” Steven Slater, the Jet Blue steward who went bonkers on a recent flight after being hit in the head by an overhead luggage bin door. Clearly the head-bonking was merely a trigger that unleashed in Slater a flood of pent up frustrations after years of airborn cattle drives. Have you flown lately? What was not to long ago a fairly comfortable, seamless, even luxurious mode of transport has lately become akin to a municipal bus ride through downtown Tegulcigalpa, lacking only the Indian woman in the bowler hat with a live pig on her lap. And you can bet that reality is not far off. Hell, I’m surprised Slater didn’t go postal that day, so I view his little trip down the inflatable ramp while quaffing a $5 Hienekin an act of pure restraint. But, christ, why are we still talking about him 2 weeks later? Is Slater really acting out on behalf of the “little guy”, or is he just a another kooky dipshit who let the pressures of the job get to him? Not since Joe-the-Dumb-Ass-Plumber has some average shlub gotten more media play.
The other big dog issue is all the hullabaloo about the Islamic cultural center proposed to be built a few blocks from “ground zero” in Manhattan. Frankly, I’m sick-as-shit about all the babble in recent years about religion, beliefs, “values”, and other superstitions. We now have a “god-given” right to bear arms. What’s next, a “god given” right to bare arms? Please stop with all the hocus-pocus bullshit, America, and pull yourself out of the Dark Ages.
But there’s Obama, just having to weigh in on the Islamic Center issue, during a Ramadam ceremony at the White House last week. Ramadam, of course, is the cleasing ritual practiced by Muslims who attempt to atone for their sins by skipping lunch for a month. Whatever. Actually it was fairly gutsy for the Prez to speak out on such a “controversy”, but you have to admit, he picked a pretty safe audience. But then shit met fan and the usual right wing douche bags (John Kyl, John Boehner, the odious Charles Krauthammer) jumped into the fray with all their nonsense about “hallowed ground” and the people “speaking with one voice”, and Obama backed down, “redefining” his comments. Since then, I’m sure he has redefined his redefinition a few dozen more times, but when it’s all said and done, the cultural center will be built and there’s frankly nothing anybody can do about it except flap their jaws.
Which is really what all of this, and the other summertime issues and controversies amount to in the final analysis: filling the hot air with more hot air until the country finally says “enough”, turns off the tube, cracks a brewski, throws a few slabs on the grill, and waits for football season to start. Ah, the backyard patio: America’s true hallowed ground. And football: America’s true religion.
I keep waiting for the Glenn Beck phenomonon to just blow over. Afterall, this guy has been playing the wierd-ass role of the right wing Cosmo Kramer for a decade now and still hadn’t achieved anything beyond freak show status until that last years. That’s when Beck decided to ratchet up the psycho factor in one last ditch attempt at relevance and, like a caged baboon, began heaving verbal wads of feces at his Fox viewers. The whole thing reeked of desperation and flop sweat, but for a while the stunt appeared to work: his flaccid mug on the cover of Time, a couple of best selling books aimed at the tea-bagger “intelligencia”, television rating success, and the coveted “buzz” that goes with flavor-of-the-month status.
But after a while, even dumb-ass America appeared to be losing interest, retreating to the comfort of reality TV and all-you-can-eat buffets. That’s when Glenn resorted to the talk show huckster version of the nuclear option: like a puffy-faced nerd version of Tammy Fae Baker, he began to talk to god. It worked for the Bakers, it worked for Swaggard, and it worked all the way back in the 20′s and 30′s when broadcasting became home to a whole slew of hucksters, selling financial salavation to the impoverished and goat gland injections to the impotent. Of course, those swindlers were operating in a legal safe haven across the border, at one million kilowatt radio stations in Ciudad Jaurez and Metamoros, while Beck is selling his snake oil on a major television network but, afterall, this is what they call the “free market place” of ideas, right?
Funny thing is, even Beck’s latest stunt appeared to be doomed to failure, a little too loony even for the blue hairs and the grey beards who once found the tourets syndrome act so endearing. Ratings were in free fall and, for a while at least, it appeared that some semblance of “sanity” was restored in the world of kooky conservative broadcasting.
So what’s keeping Beck afloat? The liberal media, what else?
A day doesn’t pass when Kieth Olberman doesn’t inflate Beck’s status with an inclusion into his “Worst Persons in the World” segment. And Huffington Post picks over every insane Beck raving like a paleontologist sifting through the Dead Sea Scrolls. Come on, guys, this shithead is trying to go away. And he should go away. He not Mr. Republican. That’s Limbaugh…and Hannity is the first one off the bench. And Beck is not really psycho. That honor goes to the little schmuck Michael Savage. Beck’s thing is so transparently a money grubbing act. And it’s an old act.
Exit stage left.
Category : Godammed Bastards, Main Stream Media, Politics
Finally got around this weekend to reading the “inflammatory” Rolling Stone article on General Stanley McChrystal, the “hit piece” authored by embedded reporter Michael Hastings. Clearly, I should have read the article the moment R.S. arrived in my mail box, but I spent 3 days periodically staring at the air brushed cover photo of Lady Gaga’s rump, never realizing it was McChrystal’s ass that would end up grass. That is, until I turned on the tube and was avalanched by the coverage of the fall out from Hasting’s piece.
Needless to say, before the dust settled, President Obama had relieved McCrystal of his command duties in Afghanistan, to be replaced by the more user-friendly David Petraeus, a baffling move given the actual content of the article. If anything, McChrystal comes across as an affable, albeit arrogant, soldier, perhaps a tad entranced by his own press clippings, but otherwise an Ok Joe trying his best to do the job right in the unforgiving circumstances of trying to win an un-winnable war.
Actually the most damning thing in the R.S. piece was McChrystal’s role in the cover-up of Pat Tillman’s death:
After Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former-NFL-star-turned-Ranger, was accidentally killed by his own troops in Afghanistan in April 2004, McChrystal took an active role in creating the impression that Tillman had died at the hands of Taliban fighters. He signed off on a falsified recommendation for a Silver Star that suggested Tillman had been killed by enemy fire. (McChrystal would later claim he didn’t read the recommendation closely enough – a strange excuse for a commander known for his laserlike attention to minute details.) A week later, McChrystal sent a memo up the chain of command, specifically warning that President Bush should avoid mentioning the cause of Tillman’s death. “If the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death become public,” he wrote, it could cause “public embarrassment” for the president.
But the Tillman cover-up was old news, perhaps a reason to thwart his ascent to status of Allied Commander, but one would assume Obama was fully vetted on that issue before he made the promotion. (The other damning fact exposed by Hastings is that McChrystal prefers Bud Light Lime to French Bordeaux, but, what the hell, 10 years in the Middle East heat probably eats at the brain.) So what warranted the swift and provacative shit-canning from Obama? The now infamous Biden-”Bite me!” witicism? I hope not, since that dorky, un-funny comment was offered up by an aide to the General. McChrystal’s characterization of Obama as appearing “uncomfortable and intimidated” during their first meeting? Again, I hope not, given that the comment of hearsay from an un-named source:
According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn’t go much better. “It was a 10-minute photo op,” says an adviser to McChrystal. “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. Here’s the guy who’s going to run his fucking war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.”
The Boss was pretty diappointed? Whoa! Gotcha!!!
Of course, the most interesting thing about Hasting’s profile is the fall-out from the scrubs in the mainstream media, including this exchange from future Dancing with the Stars contestant, the vacuous home-wrecker Lara Logan of CBS news, appearing on CNN’s “Reliable Sources”:
I mean, the question is, really, is what General McChrystal and his aides are doing so egregious, that they deserved to end a career like McChrystal’s? I mean, Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has.
Although I essentially agree with Logan’s conclusions, what does Hasting’s military service have to do with anything? It wasn’t his decision to can McChrystal’s ass, it was Obama’s.
I also researched Logan’s “service” to her country, but this photo was all I could come up with.
But Logan’s reaction pales in comparison to this laughable segment recorded last week on the “No Spin Zone”, between Bill O’Reilly and Geraldo Rivera, the only reporter that was actually expelled from a war zone (at least in recent memory) because of disclosures that truly compromised the the safety of our troops. Here, Rivera, the pathetic punchline to a million journalism jokes, accuses Hastings of compromising national security with his Biden-”Bite Me” revalations:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/geraldo-rivera-compares-rolling-stones-mic
Category : Main Stream Media, Music and Entertainment, Politics, Video of the Day
If you clicked play on the above youtube video, you saw ample demonstration on just to what extent the “tea party movement” is comprised of a bunch of humorless geezers. The original parody ad (which you’ll actually be able to view below) shows an actress portraying a Crayola crayon executive thanking tea partiers for a surge in sales, thanks to all of the stupid little handwritten signs they parade around at their rallies. A sketch comedy group called The Full Ginsberg was responsible for the satire.
But in a not-so-funny turn of events, a conservative blog, aptly named iOwnthe World.com threatened Crayola’s parent company, Hallmark, with a boycott if the ad was not immediately pulled from youtube. Hallmark, cowering from the realization that thousands of 60-year-old cranks would no longer be purchasing their crayons on the regular basis, issued the cease-and-desist order to youtube and the video disappeared.
Here is one of the letters recieved by iOwnthe World.com sent by Crayola:
“Thank you for your email.
We appreciate you expressing your concern that Crayola may have been involved in the making of a parody-type video clip about recent political activities. The video depicts a spokeswoman acting as the CEO of Crayola, the Crayola logo and products, as well as both verbal and visual messages that were not authorized by Crayola.
Crayola was not involved in the making of this video, nor did we in any way authorize the use of our brand name, the Crayola logo or the products shown. We are currently investigating the video, and will take the necessary steps to ensure our consumers are aware that we were not involved in the making of this video.
We appreciate your contact and hope we have restored your confidence in the Crayola brand. If additional assistance is needed, you may reach us by telephone at (800) 272-9652 weekdays between 9 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time or e-mail by visiting Crayola.com.
Sincerely,
Consumer Affairs Lead Representative
CRAYOLA”
But having the insulting parody was not quite enough for the humorless crybabies at iOwnthe World, who demanded a stiffer penalty, damn it!
“But as I said, having the video pulled from YouTube is not enough. These filmmakers tainted the Crayola name. I’m not so sure I feel the same about Crayola anymore. A have a Pavlovian response to Crayola; I hear Crayola and I feel as if I’m being hated and my beliefs besmirched and my way of life ridiculed. I don’t think I can bring myself to buy a Crayola product anymore, or a Hallmark card – unless of course I hear that they are suing these filmmakers. Only then will I be fully confident that they never had anything to do with this, and they are serious about restoring their good name.”
Well, if drawing Hitler mustaches on photos of Barack Obama really is your “way of life”, then, brother, yes, you are being ridiculed, and rightfully so.
Here, at least for the time being, is the parody ad in its full glory: