Fwd: [WCD] Flintstone Futurama
James Nimmo
--- Dalla...@aol.com wrote:
> From: Dalla...@aol.com
> Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 00:41:29 EDT
> Subject: [WCD] Flintstone Futurama
> To: women-cli...@barf.org
>
> NY Times
> AUG 19, 2001
>
> Flintstone Futurama
>
> By MAUREEN DOWD
>
> It is true that advertisers have special
> sensitivities.
> Pizza companies sometimes don't buy commercials
> on shows that have bloodshed,
> fearing the unappetizing juxtaposition with
> tomato sauce.
> Phone companies have been known to avoid
> advertising on crime shows featuring
> ransom calls.
> Still, there was something chilling about
> Procter & Gamble's decision to pull
> its ads from an Emmy-nominated episode of the
> CBS show "Family Law" because
> the company was worried about a story involving
> gun ownership.
> P. & G. is not prudish. It advertises on soap
> operas, where hotties hop in
> and out of bed all day. But, as The Times's
> Bill Carter reported on Friday,
> the company is sensitive to political
> "hot-button issues."
> CBS apparently replaced the episode — in
> which the law firm defends a woman
> whose son shoots himself with her handgun —
> with a different episode because
> it felt it would never make up revenue lost
> from P. & G. at a time when
> advertising is in a deep slump. CBS also said
> that this summer it wouldn't
> repeat other episodes — dealing with the
> death penalty, abortion and
> interfaith marriage — that troubled P. & G.
> Other TV executives and producers cringed at
> the prospect that advertisers
> would be able to dictate the content of shows.
> Lately, it seems, there's a whole lot of
> chilling going on.
> Cesar Chavez organizing a grape boycott to
> advance the cause of migrant
> workers gave way to Tom DeLay trying to
> organize a boycott of CNN to advance
> the right-wing agenda.
> Once the tactic of the disenfranchised —
> invented in 1880 by Irish tenant
> farmers to isolate a punitive British overseer
> named Charles C. Boycott —
> boycotts are now the tactic of the
> enfranchised.
> The Bush White House says it will boycott
> journalists at Talk magazine
> because the September issue features a fantasy
> fashion layout, with two
> sultry models playing the Bush twins in pink
> frosted lipstick and pink
> feather boas behind bars.
> (Everyone is sympathetic to the Bushes' desire
> to shield their daughters. But
> sending Jenna, still on probation, to L.A. to
> be a summer intern at
> Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, which produces
> "The Sopranos," and be exposed
> to the wild Hollywood party scene is begging
> for tabloid trouble.)
> Growing up with "The Jetsons," "Star Trek," the
> General Motors Futurama
> exhibit at the World's Fair with lunar colonies
> and underseas resorts, and
> Disney's "Tomorrowland Speedway," we imagined
> the 21st century as sleek and
> expansive, a cascade of creativity and
> invention in the arts, technology,
> science and medicine.
> But the combination of the narrow Bush vision
> and shrinking economy is
> creating a climate where everything feels
> crimped, more about limiting
> expression than liberating it.
> We face the jarring prospect that some of our
> top scientists may move to
> England, where they won't face the same
> strangling curbs on stem cell
> research, which is bound to go forward even
> without President Bush holding up
> his little "Stop" sign. Expatriate scientists
> are redolent of American
> artists in the 20's who flocked to
> sophisticated Paris, far from Prohibition
> and Calvin Coolidge.
> We've had the Age of Enlightenment and the Age
> of Aquarius. Now we're in the
> Age of Arrested Development.
> Never mind the interplanetary cooperation
> presaged in "Star Trek." We're
> retreating from planetary cooperation. America
> has grown insular,
> isolationist, paranoid.
> Nothing leaps ahead. Power clings to the
> passé, retreating from the cutting
> edge, running safe TV shows, choosing
> scientific stasis. Everything — from
> Washington's trashed international treaties to
> the coal-and-drill Bush
> environmental policy to Hollywood's tedious
> remakes and endless parade of
> World War II and Cinderella-themed movies —
> looks backward, not forward.
> Our missile shield, more science fiction than
> science, has become a metaphor
> for our passive, defensive, retro crouch.
> In the name of Captain Kirk, how did this
> happen? How did we end up charting
> a course to timidly go where every man has been
> before?
>
=====
"In essence, the conflict that exists today is no more than
an old-style struggle for power, once again presented to
mankind in semi-religious trappings."
- Einstein, on his dying day, April 18, 1955
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Chief Thracian
<violad...@yahoo.com> quoted from news article:
>> In the name of Captain Kirk, how did this
>> happen? How did we end up charting
>> a course to timidly go where every man has been
>> before?
The author of this editorial answered her own question when she
summoned the spirit of Captain Kirk. IMO, Star Trek was one of the
most lousy sci-fi shows on the planet. Full of cultural pap, poor plot
and story line, and grade c special effects...with an obvious military
hierarchy and STILL NO CURE FOR BALNESS...I don't see how this show is
an improvement over conservative, traditional, parochial Amerikan
values. In fact, Star Trek was more a 50's redux, than anything else!
After all, there were no *queers on the show, except in one or two
episodes, where some planet of bisexual natives were supposed to be
the controversial focus. Feh!
Now, we have "Earth: Final Conflict", with the Talons supposedly a
fulfillment of Gene Rodenberry's wish to have gays on the show, on a
regular basis, as part of the mix of main characters. But what are
Talons really, other than the stereotyping imaginings of a well-meaing
hetero script writer? They are asexual, effeminate queers with
unattractive looks...whose mission is to accommodate and enhance the
lives of our handsome hetero heros fighting across the cosmos to save
our (hetero) way of life.
In this stereotypical interpretation of queers, if we are to be
accepted into God's many mansions, we must become, and remain,
celibate. And if we obey this anti-sexual dictate, we will evolve with
bigger brains and greater wisdom, which will do what for the human
race? This: make the lives of red-blooded heteros better than ever,
while we ugly, goosey, geeky queers remain on the sidelines, cheering
them on.
Just like the Talons.
So I'd say that referring to Star Trek as a counter-example of
retrograde Amerika, serves instead to show how deeply entrenched we
are in this muck, when we believe such lackluster sci-fi tales are
"progressive". Just because you write a story that takes place in the
future, does not make you "futuristic".
The majority of Amerikans *are stuck in the past...which is bigoted in
many ways, including of course, homophobia. I believe former Pres.
Harry Truman said: "The government is only as good as the people". So
Amerika will get what it deserves: plagues, destruction, misery,
floods, and Star Trek reruns ad infinitum.
And if *you are sick of Amerika as it remains wallowing in its own
right-wing fecal matter...then you are in a minority, and can not
expect this nation to ever see things your way. You can escape this,
by migrating to Northern California, which is now being called
"Athenia", to those already in the know.
We are moving ahead at a rapid clip, and I don't know how much longer
anyone has to seek sanctuary here, before we close all borders for the
transition from secession, into true nationhood, as the world's first
gay country.
So please allow me the indulgence of reposting a poem I previously
presented here, in September of last year, as the result of an awesome
and lovely vision:
WELCOME TO ATHENIA
(WORLD'S FIRST GAY NATION)
by Ezekiel Joseph Krahlin
Christians call me Jesus,
Muslims call me Allah,
Hindus call me Krishna,
From here to Walla-Walla.
Lakota call me "Spirit",
Nubians call me "Noob".
And if you cannot bear this,
Bend over for the lube.
My boyfriend calls me "asshole"
When others call him "God".
Don't know why they say so,
But it strikes me kinda odd.
My Father he does love me
With a passion undeserved.
For he came from up above me,
That my body may be served.
I speak in riddles sometimes,
Or in parables and verse.
And it really is sublime
To listen to Mother Earth.
She says: Children of the True Light
Welcome to our shores.
Cleanse yourselves of all your tears,
and any open sores.
Give yourselves a shower,
A shit and then a shave.
Then we give you the uniform
And you become our slave
Of love.
...end of poem
---
Hail Athenia, brave new gay nation!
Zeke Krahlin, Chief Thracian
http://surf.to/gaybible
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Mark Cohen
Dear Chief Thracian -
Without meaning to be
disrespectful (I actually agree with some of the points you make), it is hard to
take seriously anyone who rhymes Allah with Walla-Walla. Secondly, regardless of
what your point is, if you can't take yourself seriously enough to proof-read
(for misspellings and dropped letters) your own rhetoric why should anyone else
take you seriously?
Respectfully,
Mark PC
Palm Springs
California
Chief Thracian
wrote:
>Without meaning to be disrespectful (I actually agree with some of the
>points you make), it is hard to take seriously anyone who rhymes Allah with
>Walla-Walla.
Okay. Some of our brightest leaders had quite a sense of humor. I
think rhyming "Allah" with "Walla-Walla" is pretty damn funny.
>Secondly, regardless of what your point is, if you can't take
>yourself seriously enough to proof-read (for misspellings and dropped
>letters) your own rhetoric why should anyone else take you seriously?
Because typos are quite common in Usenet postings, and has been
accepted, without being used as a reason to deny the validity of what
someone posts. I have found my typos to be within a range where most
people can easily understand what word I mispelled. These typos are
usually not due to poor English, but to using the keyboard in spite of
minor repetetive stress injury.
However, since I do have a spell checker, I will try to remember to
use it, before posting any message. I've been *meaning to do this for
some time, but I need to change my habits. Though personally, I have
never thought to suggest that anyone clean up their typos before
posting...as for the most part, I could understand what they said
anyway.
But you want a pet peeve? Then how about those who repost the entire
message they are responding to, below or above their own short
responses? After all these years, too many folks refuse to learn
efficient posting methods...and when you suggest it, they often shout
you down, as if they know everything about the Internet, already. What
they do, in essence, is usurp the pioneers who made the Internet what
it is today, and create their own rules which wind up trashing the
cyberneighborhood.
---
THE TALKING SHEEP
Once upon a time, there was a talking sheep...of sorts.
He'd only speak two words, the same two all the time.
And he'd only say them once he started humping a
stranger's leg: "My baaaaad. My baaaaad."
---
Lavender-Velvet&Wool Revolution
http://surf.to/gaybible
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