November 24, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

THE CHRISTMAS LEMMINGS

Call me a Grinch, I guess. I don't like Christmas. I don't like the avarice, I don't like the crowds, and I don't like the hypocrisy. This season is supposedly about celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, but it has little to do with Christ and lots to do with consumerism. Historical evidence doesn't even support the idea that Jesus was born in December. Christmas was borrowed from the Roman holiday Saturnalia, which is mostly about the winter solstice. Other pagan traditions, such as the Christmas tree, have been incorporated down through the centuries. It would be a much better season if we just had a simple celebration of the solstice. I don't mind the bright lights and other festive decorations to brighten up the darkness of this time of year. But let's ditch the consumerism, the phony cheer, and the insincere platitudes. This article by Danny Schechter is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

BOSTON, MA November 24 2007: You could almost run that old Lone Ranger theme - the famous William Tell Overture - as the soundtrack to the local news stories I watched here in Boston on Thanksgiving day featuring perky local news "correspondents" stirring a buying frenzy with upbeat reports on manic consumers racing into malls for "midnight madness" sales.

It was, in the words of Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping, a "shopopocalyse." His crusade against out of control consumption is pictured in the new film "What Would Jesus Buy?," opening at some theaters in LA and San Francisco.

This highly relevant film was not on TV, of course, because our media is deeply complicit in promoting/encouraging mindless consumerism through newspapers, commercials and on newscasts. This is a well-practiced formula mirroring TV's promotion of the war in Iraq, as the line between selling and telling disappears. Media outlets are amply rewarded with endless ad revenues hyping all the discounted goodies you can get with the Boston Globe packing no less than 43 advertising/sales supplements (down from 47 a year ago) into a paper that had wall to wall Macy ads, including some offering $10 coupons to bribe you into the stores. Marketing is what the media does best.

The only negative note was the fear among some that toys might be unsafe because of lead or other dangers. Some 26 million toys have been recalled this year, a sign that the regulators were asleep on this front in the economic wars as they were on Wall Street. The real danger may not be lead in the toys but another type of lead in our heads that leads to denial on the part of millions that we can go on with addictive well-cultivated crazed consumption habits.

PAYING DEARLY FOR IRAQ WAR

One of Hemingway's short stories has the line "the war was always there." It's that way with Iraq. No matter how many distractions there are, the war is always there It has cost us dearly in American lives and wounded, in the huge military outlays, and in credibility around the world. It's also costing us in food and fuel prices. I dread trips to the grocery store or the gas station. We're getting the worst of all worlds: flat or declining wages and skyrocketing prices. This article by Blake Fleetwood is at www.huffingtonpost.com:

There is a compelling article in yesterday's New York Daily News by Pulitzer Prize winner William Sherman.

Sherman shows that there is not much for us to be thankful for in terms of the cost of food we put on the table this week.

Consumers are getting slammed with the biggest increase in food prices in a decade -- fueled by a perfect storm of rising grain prices and a falling dollar.

Poultry -- including your Thanksgiving Turkey -- along with dairy products have risen the most. A glass of milk costs New Yorkers up to 42% more than last holiday season.

The wholesale price of eggs has soared 86% compared to last fall, at one point.

"I'm spending $50 to $80 more a week on food than last year", according to one Harlem shopper.

The surge is driven by a ripple effect -- the Iraq war, the rise in oil prices, the growing deficits -- and a confluence of factors beginning with corn and wheat crops diverted to ethanol production, according to economists.