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Thursday, July 22, 2010

Tea and Onions

The Tea Party is an American grassroots political movement whose ideal candidate is Sarah Palin. That really should tell you everything you need to know about the members of this party, but in the interest of multiple viewpoints, some other highlights of the Tea Party include
- having Orly Taitz as a prominent member, a woman so crazy even Bill O'Reilly has called her a nut. Among her claims of mistrust is that Obama is a Hamas supporter and that the US House of Representatives are building labour camps.
- being the larger umbrella under which the birthers movement nestles themselves. The Birthers are a group of people who allege that Obama is actually born in Kenya, and that the falsification of his papers and installation in the White House is part of a radical Islamic plot to control America.

On the other end of the spectrum is The Onion, which is a satirical news site that is, frankly, brilliant. They put out a combination of written articles, videos, and radio news segments that lampoon everything from current politics to media to sports to relationship matters and basic human behaviour. As an example, of of my recent favourite articles from them was entitled "Unstable relative, toddler compete for attention at family get-together". Other examples of headlines; "NBC announces fall cancellation lineup", "God hinting at retirement", and "Nation demands tax dollars only be wasted on stuff that's awesome". And that's just the tip of the iceberg, with them having news reports on Jennifer Aniston adopting a 33 year old boyfriend from Africa, how the US was condemned for pre-emptively using Hilary Clinton on Pakistan, and how the South African vuvuzela symphony were becoming increasingly irritated by the soccer games that were breaking out during their concerts. This level of brilliant satire is really on par for the course on The Onion, with their video and audio segments being delivered with the most serious voices and expressions possible, simultaneously parodying news anchors and the news they report on. Essentially, it's the opposite of the Tea Party, in that regularly reading The Onion will most likely increase your intelligence, whereas regularly associating with the Tea Party will most likely lower it.

So why am I talking about two entities that are on opposite ends of the spectrum? Well, that's because the Tea Party has recently discovered The Onion, and have done with it exactly what you'd expect stupid people to do; take it seriously, completely failing to see the humour even after it has been pointed out to them. They've taken it one step further, though, picking up a video segment the Onion originally posted in 2008 to poke fun at Bush's congressional policies and the zombie apocalypse simultaneously, and have begun circulating it as recent news and an indication of what Obama's real plans against America are.

Here's the video in question, which was put up by The Onion in January of 2008


Note the date; this was before Obama was even confirmed as the official Democratic candidate.

And this is how the Tea Party members have distorted this segment;

Mind you, if you read the comments, you'll notice one particular individual taking the lack of any information that proves the validity of this video not as a hint that the video might be less than genuine, but rather as an indicator that not only is the video authentic, but that the government is actively covering it up, with co-operation from the entire internet, I guess.

There are so many things wrong here I don't know where to begin. For one thing, if we are to accept, for the sake of debate, that these racist, close-minded individuals are somehow right, and that they've somehow stumbled onto Obama's plan for death camps, did they really think that these plans would be openly discussed on C-SPAN and then put on youtube? Or, for that matter, that they'd send this as a regular bill to be voted on in congress, in some odd "Well, we can't do illegal things without making sure we're following due process" way of thinking?

Another question that begs asking is, did all the people taking this seriously miss the flesh-eating and the otherworldly strength aspects of the speech? Or the fact that the "person" presenting the bill doesn't actually exist? I can understand people not noticing or understanding the date of posting or the Onion symbol; after all, these are people likely unfamiliar with both C-SPAN and The Onion. But really, they do everything in the video to point to a zombie apocalypse short of actually saying "zombie apocalypse", which is part of the joke.

Yet another puzzling issue is the belief of the Tea Party that news like this would somehow fly under the radar. I mean, yes, I'm incredibly jaded about the state of current news, where genocide is usurped by paparazzi pictures for top headline. But even I don't think that if the US congress were planning to put their citizens in death camps that news agencies would not take notice and atleast report on it. I mean, it is a pretty big deal, regardless of which side of the political spectrum you fall on, so how exactly would something like this fly under the radar?

And then, of course, there's the big question of why, as in why Obama would do something even remotely close to this. This one is actually understandable from the Tea Party perspective; what it comes down to is fear. Obama has become the boogeyman to these people, and all of them are projecting their worst fears onto him, be it socialism (a term I'm not sure many of them actually understand) or fanaticism (which, oddly, is wrong only when it's employed in the service of a religion other than their own) or even race (a black guy as president? He must not be a real American!). Some of these fears are that Obama will, for whatever reason, abuse his power to punish Americans...because he's bored, I guess. I mean, with Lost over, there's nothing good to do on Tuesdays anymore, and even the President needs to relax sometimes. Amusingly (or horrifyingly), these same people supported Bush and Co. when they actually did abuse their powers in similar fashion.

Ultimately, these people will be around, no matter what, and they will do their hardest to perpetuate their level of stupidity, no matter what. It remains up to the rest of us sane, functioning members of society to ensure that the outlying crazies never overpower our voice, and that we, in turn, never ignore their presence. The internet helps with identifying and tracking these crazies with greater ease than ever before, but we still need to make sure they remain inconsequential, for everyone's sake. Because if they're like this now, imagine how they'll act with some real power in their hands.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Another video today

This one is a satire of BP's attempts to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (which they've somehow managed to cap as of yesterday, just shy of three months since the pipe burst). With more than 9 million views, I'm sure this is a recognizable video for many of you, but I've found its rewatchability to be unusually high, and it really is spot on, so enjoy.



The creators of the video were New York's Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, better known as UCB comedy. They can be found here; http://www.ucbcomedy.com/

Thoughts? Either on this, or the oil spill in general, or on this cap that BP has put on?

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Foxconn

Foxconn technology Group is a hardware manufacturing company, with factories primarily in China. Their biggest client is Apple, and these days, that's a very lucrative contract for any manufacturer, especially with Jobs introducing a new hipster must-have product every 2 months. The issue with Foxconn, however, is that they take the phrase "drop dead" very literally; since the announcement of the iPad from Apple, 12 employees at Foxconn factories have died, either by committing suicide, or simply from being overworked. The most notable case is this one, where an employee died after working a 34 hour shift. No, that's not a typo; a person was made to work for more than a day straight, literally until he dropped dead.


Foxconn's response to these rash of deaths, far from considering not overworking their employees, was to install anti-suicide nets across their buildings, so employees who do decide death is better than working at Foxconn can land in the nets and get back to work.

There are several aspects of this whole case that disturb me, chief among them being the seeming apathy from, well, everyone. Jobs has repeatedly thrown his support behind Foxconn and called the deaths "regrettable" and "troubling". The public seems to shrug off news of every death as "the price for cheap products", which is troubling on so many levels, chief among them being the idea that a human life is an acceptable tradeoff for affordability of a gadget. After all, we're not talking about food here; the foxconn employees don't save 10 lives by sacrificing their own. These people are dying in the creation of iPods and iPhones. Are we really gaining anything as a population by feeding people to the slaughter just so we have something to listen to on a commute? Is the iPhone really that good that it's worth a human life? Why are we as a group at the stage where meaningless technology is worth human lives? We're not talking about making pacemakers and defibrillators here; there is not a single Apple product that can save lives, so why is it acceptable in the slightest that people are dying in the manufacturing process?

Furthermore, the defense of "well, it would be costlier if it was manufactured in North America" is not only irrelevant, but it's bullshit. Did I miss the memo where it was decided that $700 ought to cover the fact that someone died making the product? I have a hard time believing that if even one American or Canadian worker died after working 34 hours that the factory wouldn't be shut down, and the company running the factory wouldn't have their clients terminate contracts for fear of backlash (and hell, maybe I'm wrong, and naive for thinking so, which seems imminently probable). But Jobs does essentially the equivalent of "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie" and nobody bats an eyelash. I just can't wrap my head around the fact that people are dying and killing themselves out of being overworked, and somehow this isn't a point of mass anger. Not only that, but Apple continues to support this kind of behaviour, and consumers continue to support Apple. Is it latent or subconscious racism? Does the distance add a sense of "out of sight, out of mind" to these cases? Or, (and this is what I'm most afraid of), has our consumerism taken over so completely that we now apply a "by any means necessary" belief to even the things we want and don't really need? The only useful Apple product is their laptop; everything else is a luxury item. So why is it acceptable and, in fact, borderline irrelevant that people died in the making of these products? And not just one or two; 12 people to date. With no consequences whatsoever.

I shudder to think of the kind of callousness that makes something like this go unnoticed by the public at large. I really, really hope that I'm wrong, or that this is an anomaly, or maybe even that it simply hasn't reached the tipping point where it enters the public consciousness. If that's not the case, and we truly are at the point where people's death from manufacturing mp3 players and cell phones is greeted with a "meh", then I think we as a species are beginning to lose our fundamental humanity. And if that's true, it can only get worse from here.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Coincidence...or a sign?

So I listen to a variety of podcasts, two of which are the Totally Laime podcast, hosted by Elizabeth Laime, and The Nerdist podcast, hosted by Chris Hardwick. The guests this week on said podcasts were Marc Maron and Maria Bamford, respectively. Now, these podcasts, while starting at around the same time, are run entirely independent of each other. My listening to them on the same day was a coincidence, but all the better to catch what did happen.
Marc Maron, on the Totally Laime podcast, name-dropped Maria Bamford as a comic he enjoys watching. As I was aware that Bamford was the guest on The Nerdist, which was up next on my listening queue, I thought "Hmm, that's odd." And then didn't give it any more thought. And then, on The Nerdist podcast, Chris Hardwick, while recounting one of his drunken nights tales, proceeds to name-drop Marc Maron as a person he was at this particular party with.
Coincidence? Yes, most likely, unless you buy into the theory that all four aforementioned people got together and hatched this conspiracy with the sole purpose of messing with my head, which, I will admit, does sound very likely. Hmm...
Either way, I took this as an indication that I should end my unexpected hiatus from this blog. Should any of you be interested in any of the podcasts mentioned, their official sites are linked to in the opening paragraph.
So yes, I'm back. Hide your daughters.