Poetic truth in political advertising.

Thanks to a longtime friend, a certain GSR, for sharing the link to this video. Very funny stuff from the 1990s—in many respects, a halcyon period for comedy in our beloved United States.

The trouble with phony multiculturalism.

I happened upon an item on CNN.com that illustrates what I shall call phony multiculturalism. I shall define phony multiculturalism as the cynical and superficial brand of multiculturalism that is promoted by the corporate/political oligarchy for purposes of marketing/propaganda.

The item concerns a Photoshop mishap in a Microsoft advertising campaign. Take a look at the two photographs in question. The first comes from an advertisement tailored to an American market. The second is an altered version of the same photograph, intended for a Polish market (apparently Polish people haven't yet caught on to the superiority of the Macintosh):

Kinda disturbing, no? I mean, it's bad enough that they replaced the head of a creepily smiling black man with the head of a creepily smiling white man. But to add insult to -- as it were -- injury, the white guy's head is the wrong size and is contorted such that it looks like he doesn't have a neck.

I realize that this is for the damn Poles, but still....

Here's an excerpt from the article, titled Microsoft apologizes for gaffe in online ad:

SEATTLE, Washington (CNN) -- Software giant Microsoft apologized Wednesday for the apparent bad judgment that led to the head of a black model being swapped for that of a white model in an online advertisement.

The ad -- which showed three business people, one Asian, one white and one black -- was altered on Microsoft's Web site for Poland to place the head of a white man on a black man's body.

"We apologized, fixed the error and we are looking into how it happened," said Lou Gellos, a Microsoft spokesman.

He said that because the company was still reviewing how the swap occurred he could not comment further.

Okay. So, this is typical a PR/damage control cant. But just consider for a moment how completely dishonest this claim is: They are "looking into" how it happened?

How it happened is, of course, obvious:

The business Web site CNET.com, which first published reports of the swap, wrote that the change in models may have been made with the "racially homogeneous" Polish market in mind.

So, Microsoft created an alternative version of the image in its efforts to "target" the Polish market, such as it is... This wasn't an "error." Nor was it really a "gaffe." The only mistake that Microsoft made was getting caught. The "gaffe" is that, embarrassingly, some graphic designer did a sloppy enough job that people noticed.

What's actually unsettling to people about this might be a more fundamental problem: There's a level at which such portrayals of diversity function to perpetuate the illusion that actual diversity is far more common than it really is.

To the extent to which this illusion is perpetuated, this species of multiculturalism creates a decline in the impetus or perceived necessity for measures bringing into effect actual multiculturalism.

I think that witnessing the shenanigans of Microsoft's marketing department somehow spotlights this problem. In other words, it reminds us that, in the hands of publicly traded corporations, such warm-and-fuzzy phenomena as multiculturalism, environmentalism and healthcare always function first and foremost as tools to be used in the service of making money.

And making money will always be, by definition, a conservative enterprise.

The point about Sarah Palin is that she's amoral.

News about Sarah Palin: apparently she's blah blah blah blah blah.

Sarah Palin: theories as to why she apparently arouses hatred. I probably do hate her, and insofar as I do, I hate that I hate her. To inspire the hatred of others is to wield a peculiar kind of power. There's also a part of me that is in a sense unfazed by her personally, that sees in her a representation of many of contemporary America's most morally objectionable tendencies. It is these tendencies that I oppose with all my might, whether she's there to embody them or not. Right? ...

But, Sarah Palin: she's got to be a symptom of something rather than the other way around, right? Because what symptom could possibly be CAUSED by a Sarah Palin? No. She must be the symptom. The side effect.

Sarah Palin: a side effect. Like television commercials for various god-knows-what prescription medications marketed to Baby-Boomers, so that they don't have to poop at inopportune moments, or whatever it is. SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE SARAH PALIN. Sometimes these advertisements -- the funniest of them, to be sure -- devote, like, over half of their running-time to the announcer guy reading out laundry lists of scary-ass side effects, which MAY INCLUDE MUCUS, SEIZURE, BLOOD CLOT, LOSS OF HEARING, OR -- IN RARE CASES -- SARAH PALIN...

I don't hate Palin so much as I fear the consolidation of political power among those who love her.

Sarah Palin -- to paraphrase the Sex Pistols -- She ain't no human being!, but a constellation of images, allusions and gestures.

The mediated phenomenon "Sara Palin" evokes nostalgia among a large number of Americans -- although, as far as I can tell, not a majority of them -- for a past that does not exist/that never existed.

I am reminded of accounts I have read of what it was like to witness the ascendancy of National Socialism in the tempestuous final days of the Weimar Republic: the celebration of ignorance, of seething, unfocused resentments.

The final revenge of style over content.

Sarah Palin makes George W. Bush look like a civil libertarian. She makes Ronald Reagan look pro-education. Sarah Palin is worse than these men because, whereas their moral precepts were delusional, hers are non-existent.

She's amoral: she represents indifference toward morality, indifference toward the Constitution, indifference toward the quality of life -- and livelihoods -- of present and future generations, indifference toward science, indifference toward representative democracy, indifference toward the separation of the branches of government, indifference toward education, indifference toward art, toward culture, toward freedom, toward poverty, toward the pursuit of happiness, indifference toward the principles espoused by the Founding Fathers, indifference toward religion in its meaningful sense, indifference toward history, indifference toward ideas, and indifference toward suffering.

The only thing toward which she is not indifferent is Sarah Palin. She doesn't care about the people who celebrate her. The people who celebrate her do so in the sense that they live vicariously through her. She embodies a collective, incoherent and self-contradictory dream. This dream pines for the destruction of all things unfamiliar in the interest of preserving the self as the self construes itself.

We really should be explaining the Left objection to her in moral terms: Sarah Palin is amoral.

The Colbert Report: 'Prescott Oil Loves the Earth'

Stephen Colbert introduces one of the most brilliant advertising parodies I've seen in a while. You know how oil companies are always lying shamelessly about themselves in their ads, by portraying themselves as performing a function that is directly antithetical to the function that they in point of fact perform? (Feel like I could maybe have put that more succinctly...)

Anyway: here's the ad for Prescott Oil: