Advanced Reading Group

Obama: The Choice of a New Generation

2009-01-08T09:36:00.012-05:00

Pepsi has enthusiastically appropriated the Obama campaign's imagery in its new design, which includes not only a logo that clearly suggests the Obama "O" design, but even employs the same typeface and similar slogans, such as "optimism" in place of "hope." The new motto, "refresh everything," references the new administration and the promise of change from the Obama campaign.

The company has even borrowed the campaign's "Yes, we can" slogan (itself taken from Cesar Chavez's rallying cry, "Sí se puede") in some of its outdoor advertising, though changing the voice to the second-person: "Yes, you can." It is a typical ironic reversal employed in advertising: while suggesting the unity of a social movement, it is actually a command to the individual to engage in a particular act of consumption, ideally accompanied by the feeling of belonging to a revolutionary social movement.

If they haven't already enlisted him, I'm sure Shepard Fairey would be happy to design for them a T-Shirt, too.

Philistines

2009-01-06T10:54:00.004-05:00

Though they are the enemy of all that is good and true, they often hold positions of great power. They follow convention and are guided by base, materialistic values and desires. They abhor the creative, the critical, the comical, the deviant, and any challenge to the established norm. They are absolutely utilitarian in that they do not perceive the essential good in things (their use-value), but rather measure all things by their value in exchange for other things, usually material. They are insensitive to art as a thing of beauty and as a form of social criticism, though they may appreciate it as a cultural commodity.

Their unwavering adherence to convention prevents them from comprehending or even perceiving innovation, which they see rather as bastard aberration or pointless rebellion. Their success is usually due to their mastery of the established practices and patterns of the day, but they are vulnerable to failure as soon as the times change.

Their minds have been intractably infected by capitalist, utilitarian ideology. They fail to see intrinsic goodness, truth, and beauty. They are the soulless drones of modernity, the callous corporation of capitalism, the opportunistic agents of oppression.

Black Friday

2008-11-28T13:27:00.004-05:00

On this solemn day we mourn the passing of civility and restraint in American consumer behavior.

There are some signs, though, that we may be on the cusp of a more temperate age.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T07:30:00.004-05:00

On this day we celebrate the coming together of imperialistic religious zealots and indigenous peoples, and how that worked out nicely for everyone.

We also celebrate everyone's hard work in the fields during this past growing season, and give thanks for the bountiful harvest that we have all labored so tirelessly to produce.

Finally, we rejoice in the successful staging of a massive performed advertisement for a lucrative corporation.

God bless us.

Inaugural Address

2008-11-26T09:37:00.010-05:00

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

I think Lincoln would have been proud that I quoted his second inaugural address as the opening salvo in my long-anticipated debut in the blogosphere. As he provided the leadership that preserved our national unity through a bloody civil war, I hope to bring coherence and intelligibility to the meaningless cacophony of our nation's blogs. Only then will we achieve that "just and lasting peace" that Lincoln so dearly sought.

The absolute profundity of this event is best expressed in verse:

Jesus saved our souls, Lincoln saved our nation

Blogs proliferated, spoiling all creation.

"Who should we believe?" asked our nation's youth

The only true blog: Advanced Reading Group.

Amen.