Okay, 2nd time trying this. First time, I was logged out as I was writing this, and lost it all. Never had that happen before. What a buzzkill.
Anyway, my 9 year old son wanted to stay up late tonight and watch New Year's come in, and he wanted to watch the Dick Clark show from Times Square. I used to watch it when I was a kid, so I figured sure, why not, harmless, right?
Wow. It was like one big commercial, for one thing -- the whole event was sponsored by Nivea, and there was Nivea swag everywhere you looked, then of course all the other crap in Times Square, not exactly unexpected, right?
But what really got to me was the constant glorification of the police and the military on the show. I'm not kidding. They were constantly having little groups of NY cops say "Happy New Year" to the camera (and these are set up in advance, believe me), they had guys on foot, on horseback, in squad cars, everywhere. Cops are GREAT guys.
Then they managed to find soldiers, in full dress uniform, that they had supposedly pulled out of the crowd to do quickie little interviews and show how happy they were. I mean, I think they had them from every branch of the service. It was about every ten minutes or so, a new soldier on screen.
Then when midnight hit, they cut to Jenny McCarthy and she'd found some tall handsome soldier (yes, in his dress uniform) to smooch.
The most disturbing part of this was when they interviewed people at the barricades, asking them silly questions about where they were from, what their New Year resolutions were, etc. Now I happen to know that on shows like this they don't like surprises, they send Production Assistants into the crowd early on to find people who fit the profile of what they want -- you know, clean, fairly articulate, positive and peppy and all of that shit. And they want to make sure they're not gonna say anything offensive or that they'll have to bleep out, or whatever. It's not scripted but it's planned.
Anyway, when they asked a group of young people what their plans were for the New Years, they finished on a nice-looking young guy who said in 2012 he was joining the Marines! And he couldn't wait to "expand his horizons" by doing so! And that's what they ended on, you know, to leave the audience with that thought.
Then -- I almost forgot -- they had a lengthy interview with Michael Asshole Bloomberg, who started going on about how it was important to help people who didn't have jobs, and who were in bad economic situations, and I actually couldn't listen to what else he said because I changed the channel or else I was going to through a chair through my TV. He went on and on .....
I was really hoping that maybe the corporations would take a break from their bullshit, but of course not -- how could they NOT exploit an opportunity like that when millions of people were guaranteed to be watching, especially YOUNG KIDS who aren't old enough to go out yet!!?? You know, get them there with the Justin Beiber (he played with Carlos Santana, just an abomination, singing "Let it Be" of all things -- I sure hope they paid Santana just a ton of money), and lure them in with the promise of Lady Gaga (what is she gonna wear??) and then hit them over the head with the "Cops Are Awesome Dudes!" and "That Mayor Sure Seems LIke a Nice Guy!" and the "Wow, those guys in their spiffy uniforms sure look happy and wow, one of them actually is kissing the blond woman and that other dude is gonna have his horizons broadened by joining the Marines, how awesome!"
What a sugar-coated fascist paradise was on TV tonight.
