Category: Grave

Wow, those writers and editors at the New York Times really have a flair for irony, huh?
How else to explain today’s solemn and daring exposé on the manner in which various companies have abused and manipulated public funds to obtain subsidies for various corporate endeavors, largely under the pretext of either retaining or luring jobs to the relevant locality? The Times’ article features an illustrative anecdote about United Airlines’ usage of subsidies from the state of Indiana to construct a $320 million aircraft maintenance center that has since been abandoned by the airline. Of course, the promise of jobs at this defunct plant has long been abandoned, too.
So, the Times’ thesis is pretty clear: Corporate Welfare is Bad. Why, they’ve been on this issue for years and years, and have even got Op-Ed pieces from way back in 2002 asserting this very same point! Not just any Op-Ed, mind you, but one written by He Who Spoiled Florida for All of Us in 2000.
For what it’s worth, if you search the Times’ archive for relevant terms, like, say, “corporate welfare” and “New York Times,” you most certainly will not find articles like this one in the June 17th, 2002 edition of the Village Voice documenting the Times’ own political manipulation and abuse of public subsidies to construct a new office complex for the paper in the heart of the city.
As a consumer of New York media, however, I’m so very glad the city and state of New York was able to pony up the resources to allow us to keep the New York Times here in, well, New York. Because the absurd prospect of the New York Times’ relocating to New Jersey or Pennsylvania wasn’t absurd enough, I guess.
And United Airlines sure makes a better villain.

Despite over-hyped phenomena such as “rocking the vote” and last year’s 33-year-old Newark, New Jersey mayoral candidate Cory Booker, it’s most certainly not an exciting time to be young and in love with politics.
Unless you live in the Bay Area, where San Francisco’s mayoral race has been winnowed down to two candidates, Gavin Newsom, 36, and Matt Gonzalez, 38. From the Los Angeles Times:
“Newsom, a liberal Democrat by the standards of most other cities, has been cast by opponents here as a socialite “Republocrat.” He is allied with billionaire Gordon Getty and lives in a multimillion-dollar mansion in Pacific Heights, one of the city’s most expensive neighborhoods, with his wife, a prosecutor and CNN commentator who is a former lingerie model.
By contrast, Gonzalez, an arts aficionado and poetry buff, doesn’t own a car and rents an apartment in the considerably less fashionable Western Addition neighborhood. Newsom’s supporters portray Gonzalez as an ultra-left “cafe brat” whose support won’t extend beyond the city’s young hipsters.”
In any other circumstance, anytime one encounters the word “hipster” in an article about politics, giant warning signs should go off in your head. I mean, it’s one thing to write about “Deanie Babies” and “Liebermaniacs,” but “hipsters”? Last I checked, Sarah Records was not a political party and The Rapture wasn’t running for office on the DFA ticket (and just how many electoral votes are Greenpoint or Silverlake worth, anyway?).
Regardless…this election in “the City by the Bay” is a promising blip on the otherwise shameful map of Californian politics. I’ll refrain from commenting on the “lingerie model” and “poetry buff” aspects of this mayoral race, but it’s nonetheless heartening to have to choose between voting for a “liberal Democrat” and a Green party candidate with at least a fighting chance.
Then again, this is San Francisco, so I guess it’s to be expected.

For a few weeks now, we’ve quietly had God working for us as an unpaid intern, and He has for the most part been occupying Himself with support-related tasks around the office, such as dusting Jean-Paul’s various Edward Said and Ryan McGinness books, and helping Matt categorize his Us Weekly collection into the Bonnie Fuller and Janice Min eras (there is, in fact, a striking difference between the two reigns, He insists).
But events which have occurred over the past few days seem to have angered Him, such that He has been glowering around the workplace and approaching his assigned task of downloading Tracy Morgan MPGs with much less zeal than we have become accustomed to seeing in His endeavors. So, as a gesture of appreciation for all His hard work (not to mention creating us in His image!), we asked if He would care to voice his thoughts to the low culture readership. In a booming and thunderous voice that very likely disturbed our upstairs neighbors at Nerve.com, He subsequently presented us with what he called His “Smite List”, which we have chosen to run in an edited form, despite His protests.
Thee Who Shalt be Smitten
by God, aka Yahweh, aka Allah, aka Buddha, et cetera
1. CBS President Les Moonves, for not having the compunction to resist those who would claim to speak on My behalf, but who were in reality a small minority of vocal, churchgoing conservative right-wingers who threatened to boycott watching rewarding family programs such as “Survivor: Pearl Islands”.
2. Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority head, L. Paul Bremer, for imposing a ruthlessly unjust flat-tax system on his new American colony. I have been monitoring “conservative wet dreams” such as this for some time now, Paul, and don’t think I don’t know about that copy of Forbes magazine and the box of Kleenex situated next to your king-sized bed in Saddam Hussein’s former palace in Baghdad.
3. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, for not yet adequately supporting the ascension of My very first openly gay bishop. While I am unsure whether I am technically on record as being for or against homosexuality, I would like to think that as a fair and just God, I shall come down on the side of tolerance for gays, just this once.

Not since Virginia Slims tried to connect smoking with women’s lib has an ad so offensively linked consumption with power as this new campaign from the white devils at A Diamond is Forever.
Since the Web site shortens the ad’s text, here it is from the print campaign:
Your left hand says ‘we.’ Your right hand says ‘me.’ Your left hand rocks the cradle. Your right hand rules the world. Women of the world, raise your right hand. A Diamond is Forever. The New Diamond Right Hand Ring. Romantic, Modern Vintage, Floral and Contemporary Styles at ADIAMONDISFOREVER.COM
That’s seriously fucked up. How about:
Our left hand says ‘greed.’ Our right hand says ‘monopoly.’ Our left hand held down the slave laborer working in the mine. Our right hand searched his ass for any contraband. Women of the world, raise your right hand in favor of exploitation.
Speaking of sparkly rocks of death, Black Table has an interview with Janine Roberts, author of Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel on the very same topic today.

White House Takes Credit for Surge in Economy by Richard W. Stevenson
Personally, I think it’s because of the new $20s: they make spending fun!
[low culture kidz corner: Hey, kids! Want a new $20 of your own? Just download the image above and use your color printer to make as many as you like! It’s easy, but you may need an adult’s supervision.]

Here at low culture, we have already speculated how agonizing it must be for members of the White House press corps to be subjected to President Bush’s repetitive jokes and audaciously inane pet nicknames for his friends and peers.
Having taken a closer look at the full transcript of Tuesday’s press conference, however, it became vividly clear: the president must be taking leadership cues from David Brent of BBC America’s second-season hit television series, “The Office”). David (brilliantly played by actor Ricky Gervais) is the bumbling and deluded Regional Manager at a paper-supply company in an office park in the middle of nowhere.
Fans of the show can check out the uncanny similarities by looking at the lesson plan:

Despite reports that jocularity was in the air during yesterday’s 48-minute White House press conference, some quip-weary reporters seem to have tired of President Bush’s notorious wit and affectionate name-calling:
“When the president called on Mark Smith, the Associated Press radio reporter thanked him for ‘including radio folks’ in the give-and-take.
‘A face for radio,’ Bush rejoined, invoking a line he has applied to other radio reporters.
To that, a slightly chagrined Smith replied: ‘I wish I could say that was the first time you told me that, sir.’ Amid the short bursts of laughter, the smiling president retorted: ‘The first time I did it to a national audience, though.'”
This single moment in the press conference ought to inspire genuine pity for the poor “filtering” members of the press. I’d imagine that touring with Bush day in and day out would be comparable to being married to an exasperatingly bad stand-up comic who practices his or her routine on you each night, and then having to furthermore sit in and watch his or her stage shows every three months.
And I guess this explains why we haven’t seen many outtakes from “Journeys with George”.

Christine Hauser of the New York Times must have had to refrain from smiling to herself as she penned her account of Palestinian officials agreeing to form a new, permanent government in the wake of the impending November 4 dissolution of the current, temporary cabinet.
“The Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat asked the prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, to form the cabinet, Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said today, according to news agency reports from Ramallah in the West Bank.
‘President Arafat and the Fatah Central Committee have unanimously asked Abu Ala to form a new Cabinet based on the current one,’ Mr. Shaath said, using Mr. Qurei’s nom de guerre.”
Hauser’s right, of course. Though she’s ostensibly discussing the creation of a Palestinian government, using the more conventional notions of “pseudonym” or “fictitious name” lacks the ever-so-clever double entendre of the French nom de guerre, which is also used in a pseudonymous capacity, but literally means “a war name, or a name used in the course of fighting.”
So, when does this government-creating end and the fighting resume? I was so busy quibbling over semantics that I forgot, whose turn is it?

Presumably, those of you living in New York have by now been bombarded with these public-service ads from the American Legacy Foundation, founded in the wake of the tobacco industry’s settlement with 46 states in 1999 and “dedicated to building a world where young people reject tobacco and anyone can quit.”
That’s a fine and noble mission, and certainly warrants some form of applause. But they’re making it so hard for me to get behind their message. First, they unveiled the truth® campaign, which utilized an uber-didactic narrative and “cutting-edge” filmmaking methodology to try to persuade the MTV generation that smoking is bad for you (natch) and the tobacco industry is run by a bunch of greedy, calloused motherfuckers who never saw a Michael Mann film they could really embrace.
Within the past year or so, the relatively austere tone of the original truth® campaign morphed into the “Crazyworld” campaign, which seemed to channel HBO’s absurdist “Carnivale” television series, but populating the cast with hipsters rather than circus freaks (those terms are in fact mutually exclusive).
Now comes our very own New York-tailored campaign, “A Smoke-Free New York Works”, which was ostensibly created in the wake of a vocal protest campaign by those who decried Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki’s recent ban on smoking in bars and nightclubs. Again, a fine and noble mission. Anyone living in Los Angeles or California in general knows this can work just fine, despite many TimeOut New York cover stories whining to the contrary.
The problem, however, is that this new American Legacy campaign seems to throw out (alongside the didacticism, thankfully) the avant-garde pretense of its predecessors in lieu of pure and simpleminded idiocy. Here’s the gist: whether sitting on a subway car, or waiting at a bus stop, or leafing through the Village Voice, a bold white ad with hand-scrawled red text leaps out at you, often bearing the most hilariously asinine phrases imaginable. Here are some real, actual samples, unlike our “absurd” headline:
“If they ban smoking in college classrooms, it will destroy higher education!”
“If they ban smoking in office buildings, no one will ever work again!”
“If they ban smoking in churches, it will wipe out all religion!”
“If they ban smoking at JFK, nobody will ever fly again!”
“If they ban smoking in stores, everyone will quit buying stuff!”
Bear in mind these are all actual ads you may have encountered. But I have to ask, who the hell would ever utter such stupid, contemptibly moronic assertions? And if these people really exist, are they really worth listening to, much less quoting?
So, once again, the lofty goals of the anti-smoking industry — despite my being otherwise inclined to endorse any and all of their efforts — have left me to consider supporting efforts and initiatives that would remove their funding. Well, not really, but…something needs to be done, because if I ever step into a bathroom and see this hanging on the doorway or near the stalls, I’ll snap and ask someone for a light. Again, this is a real and actual ad:
“If they ban smoking in bathrooms, it will kill the urinal cake industry!”
Do I even care about the urinal cake industry? It’s the tobacco industry that needs to be reined in, chumps, and ads like this are completely counter-effective.