If you haven’t read this story yet, it’s a kill. Due to low enrollment, a NJ elementary school named after TheOne will be closing it’s doors this summer.
At the time that the school acquired its new name, [in 2010] administrators took a lot of flak for ostensibly focusing on the name change instead of the plight of its students. But the city resident behind the movement, Myra Campbell, believed it would “send a subliminal message” to the students.
A subliminal message? How about they send a clear message about, oh say, LEARNING? Hello… anybody in there? How about we teach these kids how to read, write and do simple math, in real easy to understand language?
Subliminal messaging is part of any indoctrination process, by the way.
I have an even better idea. How about we dismantle the Department of Education this year and let the parents and citizens of a given district determine their OWN needs and requirements and finance it themselves? One thing that will be made evident in that scenario is how important the education of their children really is. Why should I be made responsible for the education of kids whose parents don’t give a damn themselves? I’m more than happy to pay taxes for the education of kids in my district, where parents and even I, have a say in what they do, read and learn. But I really don’t like paying for failing schools and teachers in Phoenix or L.A. or Chicago and where the unions and federal bureaucrats control the indoctrination and not the education of our kids.
If Hanson’s post today doesn’t “fire you up – ready to go” vote, nothing will!
This regime has to be neutralized and the only way to do it is to vote in overwhelming numbers. I don’t care if nothing gets done in the next two years, in fact, I’m hoping nothing does get done! The less this government can do, the better for all of us. And that includes defunding NPR, NEA, PBS, and the most horrible of all – HEALTH CARE! If they are defunded, nothing will be done at those entities that can offend or rob any of us.
This man and his agenda HAS TO BE STOPPED before we lose everything we’ve taken for granted. It’s time to stop taking for granted and start standing up and being counted.
Get out and vote and when you do, do so carefully!
In case you haven’t seen this, this is how your tax dollars are being spent.
And while you’re here, check this out. Spike Lee and various artists have put together a coffee table book celebrating TheOne. This is a slideshow gallery of 13 of the 200 works from the book. Grab your barf bag first, however.
From MTV’s website about it’s new reality series Jersey Shores:
Grab your hair gel, wax that Cadillac and get those tattooed biceps ready to fist pump with the best this summer at the Jersey Shore. MTV’s newest docu-soap exposes one of the tri-state area’s most misunderstood species… the GUIDO. Yes, they really do exist! Our Guidos and Guidettes will move into the ultimate beach house rental and indulge in everything the Seaside Heights, New Jersey scene has to offer. Beach by day, dancing and partying all night… they’ll live, work and rage together until the summer ends. There’s no spray tan too orange, no hair too spiked and no bod too tight for this crew.
male cast of Jersey Shores
Puleeeze! Gimme a break, willya?
Isn’t this the network that brought us “Rock the Vote”? Is it their plan to keep young American viewers stupid, with mindless television like this, so the entertainment industry can continue to direct their leftist political leanings? I think that’s something to consider.
Who cares if they’re parodying guidos or mackerel snappers? (Neither terms I ever use.) It’s the same senseless, mindless television, regardless. It takes some real balls to posture as the network that promotes citizen responsibility by encouraging young Americans to get out and vote and then turn around and air crap like this.
And let’s don’t forget, MTV has been real active and prominent in the NEA drive to promote OBAMA’s agenda.
This NEA thing that Breitbart broke last week has been rolling around in my head. There’s something seriously wrong with the story and it’s not just the propaganda end and payback scheme. There’s something deeper and deeply disturbing to me about this whole thing.
Piss Christ (Andreas Serrano).
I can’t bring myself to post that picture but you can google it. Serrano, is a photographic artist, at least, according to himself and some other wackos. In 1989, he caused a huge stir and drive to defund the NEA by his photo of a plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of his own urine. Believe it or not, this “piece” won him $15,000 in the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art contest.
By 2008, he’d moved on to feces with a show in New York. He told a newspaper that he was done with urine. I guess, he’d gone as far with that “medium” as he could go.
Interviewed by Dan Kois of New York Entertainment: “The show is also very basic — in a way, what I’m saying is that we all think we have the best shit. If you want to see some real shit, check out my shit!”, he says, beaming. “I got the best shit in town.”
I’m not making this up.
About 30 years before Serrano, and apparently his mentor, was Piero Manzoni. Manzoni was a conceptual artist. One of his brainstorms was called “The Artist’s Breath.” You guessed it – inflated balloons mounted on a wood block.
But he also did something extremely inventive: He canned his own feces in 90 cans, sealed them and sold each 30 gram can for the current price of gold (1960 price was around $1.12/gm.) Of course, the contents of the cans has always been questioned but no one wants to open one, for obvious reasons. No, I don’t mean because it’s distasteful. I mean because the value of the can goes in the dumper (pardon the pun) if it’s opened. These 90 cans are in art collections, worldwide. In 2007, can #19 sold in America for $80,000.
See? I'm not making this up. (jerkmag.files.wordpress.com)
My questions are: What is art? What makes art, art? What is the purpose of art? Who determines what is or is not art? Why should art that I find distasteful or that I do not consider art, be funded by my tax dollars? That question of course, is the fundamental argument for those in favor of dismantling the NEA, like me.
Art should be provocative and evocative. It should stir you. The first time I saw this painting, it stirred me:
Billy Boys/ Jack Vettriano
I can’t say why it stirred me, I can’t put my finger on it but, when I saw this in a gallery window, it “spoke” to me, as corny as that sounds. I had to have it and I eventually, designed an entire room around it.
But I digress.
Is Piss Christ a stirring thing? Is it provocative? What about canned artist feces? This kind of “work” is stirring, it is provocative. But does that qualify it as art? One could say that it is art to someone, some sick someone, but someone just the same. And this is where moral relativism and art meet.
Because someone else considers this art, does that mean we have to accept it? If we don’t accept it does that make us intolerant? Does it make us exclusive because we won’t accept it?
My answer is yes.
There are some things that are just wrong: simply and inherently, unacceptable and intolerable. And I think that is the basis of a lot of what’s wrong with our society: we have become tolerant of the unacceptable, of bad behavior, of the tasteless, of the ill-mannered and rude, for fear of being called intolerant or rigid or lacking an open mind …
In light of the breaking news at Breitbart’s websites, especially regarding the NEA’s push to enlist artists and others to the crusade for Obama’s agenda and to continue on from my blog about Cloward-Privan, I’m posting this. If you’ve read Alinsky, you will recognize how he incorporated these ideas into his “primer”. Of course my examples are written from a conservative point of view but you can find as many of these propaganda techniques used by Republicans, entertainers, political “comedians” and even used car salesmen.
I offer this which is another product of Columbia University deep thinkers:
From Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Propaganda Analysis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1938. Quoted at http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/propaganda/home.htm andhttp://www.vcsun.org/~ilene/secured_305text/propa.html
Name calling
Bad names have played a tremendously powerful role in the history of the world and in our own individual development. They have ruined reputations, stirred men and women to outstanding accomplishments, sent others to prison cells, and made men mad enough to enter battle and slaughter their fellowmen. They have been and are applied to other people, groups, gangs, tribes, colleges, political parties, neighborhoods, states, sections of the country, nations, and races.
Example: countless, but here’s a few: Pelosi et al calling townhall attendees astroturf, manufactured masses, Un-American, mobs. And of course, RACISTS.
Van Jones and name calling:
Glittering generalities
We believe in, fight for, live by virtue words about which we have deep-set ideas. Such words include civilization, Christianity, good, proper, right, democracy, patriotism, motherhood, fatherhood, science, medicine, health, and love. For our purposes in propaganda analysis, we call these virtue words “Glittering Generalities” in order to focus attention upon this dangerous characteristic that they have: They mean different things to different people; they can be used in different ways. This is not a criticism of these words as we understand them. Quite the contrary. It is a criticism of the uses to which propagandists put the cherished words and beliefs of unsuspecting people.
When someone talks to us about democracy, we immediately think of our own defnite ideas about democracy, the ideas we learned at home, at school, and in church. Our first and natural reaction is to assume that the speaker is using the word in our sense, that he believes as we do on this important subject. This lowers our ‘sales resistance’ and makes us far less suspicious than we ought to be when the speaker begins telling us the things ‘the United States must do to preserve democracy.’ The Glittering Generality is, in short, Name Calling in reverse. While Name Calling seeks to make us form a judgment to reject and condemn without examining the evidence, the Glittering Generality device seeks to make us approve and accept without examining the evidence.
In acquainting ourselves with the Glittering Generality Device, therefore, all that has been said regarding Name Calling must be kept in mind.
Example: with many “glittering” words and imagery:
Transfer
Transfer is a device by which the propagandist carries over the authority, sanction, and prestige of something we respect and revere to something he would have us accept. For example, most of us respect and revere our church and our nation. If the propagandist succeeds in getting church or nation to approve a campaign in behalf of some program, he thereby transfers its authority, sanction, and prestige to that program. Thus, we may accept something which otherwise we might reject.
Example: Although the AMA only represents between 18 and 25% of the nation’s doctors and few Americans know that, Obama touts them to the public because they have signed onto his healthcare reforms. Therefore, it must be a good thing for our citizens.
Testimonial
This is the classic misuse of the Testimonial Device that comes to the minds of most of us when we hear the term. We recall it indulgently and tell ourselves how much more sophisticated we are than our grandparents or even our parents. With our next breath, we begin a sentence, ‘The Times said,’ ‘John L. Lewis said… ,’ ‘Herbert Hoover said… ‘, ‘The President said, ‘My doctor said,’ ‘Our minister said ‘ Some of these Testimonials may merely give greater emphasis to a legitimate and accurate idea, a fair use of the device; others, however, may represent the sugar-coating of a distortion, a falsehood, a misunderstood notion, an anti-social suggestion.
Example: The president said “we are the ones we have been waiting for” therefore it’s considered a call to arms by his supporters.
Oprah said:
Plain folks
“Plain Folks” is a device used by politicians, labor leaders, businessmen, and even by ministers and educators to win our confidence by appearing to be people like ourselves “just plain folks among the neighbors.” In election years especially do candidates show their devotion to little children and the common, homey things of life. They have front porch campaigns. For the newspapermen they raid the kitchen cupboard, finding there some of the good wife’s apple pie. They go to country picnics; they attend service at the old frame church; they pitch hay and go fishing; they show their belief in home and mother. In short, they would win our votes by showing that they’re just as common as the rest of us, “just plain folks” and, therefore, wise and good. Businessmen often are “plainfolks” with the factory hands. Even distillers use the device. “It’s our family’s whiskey, neighbor; and neighbor, it’s your price.”
Example: The rose garden beer summit hosted by Obama for Officer Crowley and Henry Gates. Obama playing basketball or bowling on the campaign trail.
The Beer Summitt in the rose garden
Card stacking
“Card Stacking” is a device in which the propagandist employs all the arts of deception to win our support for himself, his group, nation, race, policy, practice, belief, or ideal. He stacks the cards against the truth. He uses under-emphasis and over-emphasis to dodge issues and evade facts. He resorts to lies, censorship and distortion. He omits facts. He offers false testimony. He creates a smoke screen of clamor by raising a new issue when he wants an embarrassing matter forgotten. He draws a red herring across the trail to confuse and divert those in quest of facts he does not want revealed. He makes the unreal appear real and the real appear unreal. He lets half-truth masquerade as truth. By the Card Stacking device, a mediocre candidate, through the “build-up,” is made to appear an intellectual titan; an ordinary prize fighter, a probable world champion; a worthless patent medicine, a beneficent cure. By means of this device propagandists would convince us that a ruthless war of aggression is a crusade for righteousness. Some member nations of the Non-Intervention Committee send their troops to intervene in Spain. Card Stacking employs sham, hypocrisy, effrontery.
Example: “I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money,” Obama said.
“We have more important things to be talking about than ACORN.”
Bandwagon
The propagandist hires a hall, rents radio stations, fills a great stadium, marches a million or at least a lot of men in a parade. He employs symbols, colors, music, movement, all the dramatic arts. He gets us to write letters, to send telegrams, to contribute to his cause. He appeals to the desire, common to most of us, to follow the crowd. Because he wants us to follow the crowd in masses, he directs his appeal to groups held together already by common ties, ties of nationality, religion, race, sex, vocation. Thus propagandists campaigning for or against a program will appeal to us as Catholics, Protestants, or Jews…as farmers or as school teachers; as housewives or as miners. With the aid of all the other propaganda devices, all of the artifices of attery are used to harness the fears and hatreds, prejudices and biases, convictions and ideals common to a group. Thus is emotion made to push and pull us as members of a group onto a Band Wagon.
Example: The $5 and $10 donations to Obamas campaign that his handlers said numbered in the millions. The use of campaign rally attendees to call 3 non-attending friends on their cellphones to encourage them to vote for Obama.
At the very least, filmmaker James O’Keefe and actress Hannah Giles deserve a Pulitzer Prize for their expose of deep corruption and unspeakable immorality at the ACORN housing division. But more important, I won’t rest until they receive a grant to continue their partisan artistry from the National Endowment for the Arts.
“Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun,” 31-year-old Faisal Shahzad told a federal judge. “Consider me the first droplet of the blood that will follow.”
Stop Sharia in America
click image
Obamas Wisdom and Terror in the Street
"We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever...we absorbed it and we are stronger."
Diary of a Mad Conservative 