Category: Culture

Taylor Swift: You Ignorant … (Oops! I can’t say that!)

swiftTaylor Swift has a new album out.  Coincidentally (nudge/nudge wink/wink) she launched it right after a boatload of media attention over a lawsuit she had against some guy who allegedly grabbed her ass four years ago.  According to the evidence, a DJ in Denver decided it was open season on one of the most famous bums on the planet, and as the cameras rolled, he copped a feel.  You can’t actually see him do it, but Swift maintains he did.  For my money, given Swift’s reputation for musical revenge, that was a pretty stupid move.  In fact, if he actually did it, this guy’s got to be the dumbest dumbass of the century!  Of course, if he didn’t do it — well — nobody really cares about that because Swift was always going to win the lawsuit anyway.  Why?  Because Taylor Swift; that’s why!  Think about it.  Any ruling against Ms. Swift’s allegations would have unleashed a Social Media tsunami.  The Internet mob would have risen up in holy indignation and dragged the judge through the cyberstreets by his cojones.  The members of the jury would have been hunted down and put to the lash.  Jobs would have been lost and reputations ruined.  (We’ve seen it before.)  Honestly, death threats would have been the least of that jury’s worries.  Fortunately, none of that happened.  What happened was the judge and jury made the judicious decision, dodged a digital bullet and walked away.  Team Taylor generated a pile of free publicity and put their client back on the celebrity A-list.  Taylor Swift became the reigning queen of Tweenie Girl Power.  The DJ from Denver slithered away into the ooze of obscurity from which he came.  And — oh, yeah: Ms. Swift is about to haul in a shedload of cash from her latest kiss-and-yell musical adventure.

Personally, I think the DJ from Denver is as guilty as a puppy sitting next to a pile of poo.  I also believe Swift should have sued him for a lot more than a symbolic dollar just to teach him to keep his hands to himself.  After all, nobody know how many non-famous bums he’s squeezed over the years.  However, as everybody knows, Swift and her people are masters of media manipulation, and the timing of this whole sordid affair is as suspicious as a smoking gun.  So, call it what you will, but for me, using publicity from a sexual assault as a marketing tool to sell records is a despicable way to make money.

Wicked Stepmothers – A Media Myth

step mother.jpgWe live in a time when anybody with the slightest complaint about our society (or life in general) plays the discrimination card.  The fact is there are so many groups claiming they’re oppressed these days that there’s hardly anyone left to do the oppressing.  The problem is, of course, in an ocean of phantom injury, the true tears of injustice frequently go unnoticed.  Which brings us to the one group who have endured and battled prejudice for centuries — stepmothers.

Over the years, the media has portrayed stepmothers as evil, wicked and, at times, even demonic.  Since the days of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, stepmothers have been seen as second class citizens.  The struggles they face trying to hold blended families together are demeaned and the emotional price they pay ignored.  No one weeps when Snow White’s stepmother, The Queen, discovers she is no longer “the fairest of them all” — an emotional time for any woman.

And even though our society has made massive strides in tolerance and equality in other areas, the stepmother remains a cruel cliché.  Disney Studios alone makes millions exploiting the stereotype that stepmothers are wicked creatures, capable of anything.  What child doesn’t still cringe at the sight of The Wicked Queen in Snow White?  And Cinderella’s Madame Tremaine remains an icon of evil.  It wasn’t until 1969 that a brave Sherwood Schwartz brought The Brady Bunch to American television.  Finally, a fictional stepmother, Carol Brady, who was not emotionally stilted, steeped in cruelty, hurt and harm!  In fact, the entire program practically dripped with kindness.   Alas, it was not enough.

Since Carol and the rest of the Bradys were cancelled in 1974, the media’s assault on the stepmother has been relentless.  It is a litany of shame: Frieda in Happily N’ever After, Rodmilla de Ghent in Ever After, Clementianna in Mirror Mirror, Queen Narissa in Enchanted, Queen Ravenna in Snow White and the Huntsman and, of course, Evil Queen Regina in Once Upon A Time.   And now that Disney is cranking out live action remakes, there’s no end in sight.

It’s time to end the nightmare.

What Ever Happened To Ordinary?

ordinaryI love the 21st century.  I love it that I can talk to people all over the world.  I love that my Japanese car was built in France — from Polish parts.  I love Google and Wikipedia.  I love the one-click universe.  I love it that, when I order a pizza, it gets to my house faster than the police would.  Well, maybe not that so much … but … I do think it’s cool that the person at the other end of the telephone is thousands of kilometres away, but he instantly knows my name and remembers I want extra garlic.  The point is I love all the bells and whistles this century has to offer … but … there is one serious drawback.  You can’t get regular stuff anymore.  Ordinary is just not available.  Here are a few examples:

Telephones — I have no idea what half the stuff on my telephone does.  I touch the wrong icon, and suddenly I’ve got a live-stream street scene from a village in Bhutan.  If they made an ordinary telephone that just made telephone calls, every old person on this planet would buy one.

Water — Last time I checked, there were at least a dozen different brands of water for sale.  People!  It’s water!  The only choice you’re actually making is the shape of the plastic bottle.

Ice Cream — What ever happened to Chocolate, Vanilla and Strawberry?  Do we really need Mungo Jerry Berry?  Wasabi?  Bacon?  This isn’t ice cream, folks!  It’s some kind of mutant milk product, foisted on an unsuspecting public who think they’re getting something other than a lethal dose of chemical flavouring.

Coffee — It’s impossible to do that many different things to a beverage.

Toothpaste — Every brand from Aquafresh to Sensodyne has a least 8 different versions, four different flavours and any number of different purposes.  You can have cavity control, tartar control, bad breath control or holy-hell-that-hurts control.  In the age of bone graft implants, you would think dentistry could come up with a single brush-your-teeth-after-every-meal toothpaste.

And finally:

Cars — The only purpose of the automobile is to go where you want it to go, stop where you want it to stop and go backwards if you went too far.  That’s it.  Cut out all the other crap — like power windows, heated seats, 3 surveillance cameras, 9 cup holders and a video uplink to the Mars Rover — and you could make an ordinary car that ordinary people could afford.  Plus, you could probably power it with your brother-in-law’s electric lawnmower motor.