Archive for the 'Carmageddon' Category
Friday, January 20th, 2012
New Depths of Terrible
So, The Middle is a television program on the Disney Corporation’s ABC Network. As the series’ title screams, it is as blatant a knock-off of another program, namely Malcolm in the Middle, as you could ever find in any medium, with all the usual steps down, including a huge drop-off in acting and writing talent (not that Malcolm in the Middle was ever anything wonderful itself). Obviously, the market-measurers at Disney/ABC simply noticed that the formula — ironic, navel-gazing self-pity and apolitical class resentment — still had some legs.
I mention this utterly turdy show because it just recently stepped to a new low in the multiply burned-over and reconstructed capitalist Potemkin Village that is American television. This week, The Middle aired an entire episode that was an undisguised, ham-fisted commercial for the Volkswagen Passat.
The set-up, shown in this clip, is as terrible and stupid as everything else about this series and this episode. The premise is that the main characters’ neighbors are away doing something fun, but somehow forgot to park their brand new Volkswagen Passat in their garage, so call as ask the main characters to move it in for them. This, of course, launches a series of scenes in which the main characters praise the various wonders of the Passat.
That’s the thing about commercial TV. It always gets worse, despite (and because of) all the money.
Tuesday, February 15th, 2011
Extraordinary Misery
As President Hope and Change proposes unpopular double-digit budget cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, what are his sponsors planning for back in the boardroom?
Check it out, and don’t miss the underlying report.
Draw your own conclusions.
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010
Same as it Ever Was…
Having lost its grifting, grafting hedge-fund-running czar, and having been relieved of its financial responsibility for the skein of toxic waste dumps it has left across North America, the “new” General Motors returns its attention to the true meat of its work. Yep, billion-dollar brainwashing:
Chevy television spots from Goodby featuring voiceovers from Michigan-native actor Tim Allen will air tonight when the San Francisco Giants host the Texas Rangers at 8 p.m. on Fox.
The campaign, which employs the slogan “Chevy Runs Deep” and the brand’s iconic bowtie logo, emphasizes the Chevrolet’s long history while touting new technology and safety.
Goodby called Chevy’s heritage a “tiebreaker” in competing with other automakers and said the cars are “beautiful, productive machines.”
One commercial shows a montage of old and new Chevy trucks with dogs, Hank Williams singing “Movin’ On Over” and Allen’s lone line, “A dog and a Chevy. What else do you need?”
And some say corporate capitalism has reached its senescence…
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
Feds Massively Subsidizing Electric Boondoggle
The first 4,400 purchasers of General Motors’ new Chevrolet Volt hybrid car are receiving a free gift from the public in excess of $10,000. This takes the form of a $7,500 tax credit, plus a gift of a home charging station that starts at $2,500 excluding installation (and the installation requires an electrician rewiring part of your house).
This, in a nation with a pathetic, decrepit, elite-strangled and financially imperiled public transit system.
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
The Leadership Unit Known as OilBama
On the exceedingly remote chance that it might contain an iota of a useful policy alteration, I subjected myself last night to something I can rarely take — a Presidential speech, namely President Obama’s live Oval Office address on the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
Knowing it was, in the coached-up words of The New York Times, “designed to convey a sense” that Obama is not a prostrate do-nothing corporate shill who is incapable of questioning the power structure even when its murderous nature is comparatively unadulterated nightly news, I had very low expectations.
They were too high.
The speech was historically terrible, in every imaginable way, even by the subterranean standards of this war-criminal nation-state. If I were to think in its terms, the question I would have would be this:
Can we get a commission to look into the failure of political courage and candor? Led by a Harvard entrepreneur? Until we have that, I’ll essentially have a wrenching anxiety that my way of life may be lost.
What a wipeout. If George W. Bush had been in office and delivered this rote and vacant verbiage, there would be a million green activists loading buses to go surround the White House. As it is, all’s quiet, and we’re getting a commission. A commission.
Sunday, May 16th, 2010
Tort Abortion
Guess what, kids? That’s right: Our laws were written to relieve corporate capitalists from paying for the true damages they cause.
Section 1004 of the Oil Pollution Act, passed by our lovely Congresspeople in 1990 as a strengthening of then-existing rules reads as follows:
That means that, by law, British Petroleum is not only able to enjoy all the rights of the “fictitious individual” while not risking actual individuals’ bodily punishment exposures, but the maximum it can be required to pay for the ongoing Deepwater Horizon eco-tastrophe is $75 million — less than 5% of its 2009 reported net income; 0.3% of its total assets. As a financial punishment, this is a traffic ticket, literally.
And the official response of the liberal stylists among our allegedly concerned corporate politicians? To eliminate the cap on such damages and force giant for-profit operators to face the risk of being liable, like you and me and everybody else who can’t afford a legal dream team, for what they actually do?
Nope. Of course not. Not on the table.
