Archive for the 'Assholes' Category
Saturday, February 4th, 2012
Sheryl Sandberg Sucks
The New York Times today runs a shameless butt-kiss piece on Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook. Contrary to the thesis of the NYT, which is that Sandberg is somehow a new sort of feminist as well as a “self-made” (a word used twice in the story) business genius, Sandberg might actually be even more odious than either Facebook or its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, both heavyweight champeens in the field of being hard to take.
According to the story, Sandberg considers it her mission to deny the impact of social structure and political policy on women. “[I]n her view,” the Times reporter explains, women “must take responsibility for their careers and not blame men for holding them back.”
Ms. Sandberg sees herself as more than an executive at one of the hottest companies around — more, too, than someone who will soon rank among the few self-made billionaires who are women. She sees herself as a role model for women in business and technology. In speeches, she often urges women to “keep your foot on the gas pedal,” and to aim high.
And, as she engages in such trite talk about “men” and fails to mention social class or the backward state of U.S. family welfare programs, exactly how self-made is Ms. Sandberg?
According to her 2004 NYT wedding announcement, “She is a daughter of Adele and Joel Sandberg of Miami. The bride’s father, an ophthalmologist, is a partner in Eye Surgery Associates, a group practice in Hollywood, Fla.”
Well, there you have it. Aren’t those the same basic conditions facing all little girls? Daddy’s a surgeon and I’m prepping for Harvard — I refuse to slip and have to go to FSU! And baseball starts at third base, right?
And is Sandberg spending her every hour trying to turn Facebook’s billions into better services, as her creepy CEO would have you presume? Um, unless you’re a major Procter & Gamble shareholder, not quite:
Part of Ms. Sandberg’s role has been to cultivate relationships with large advertisers seeking new ways to engage with customers — particularly female ones — online. She was instrumental in signing up advertisers like Procter & Gamble. After several meetings with Facebook, Procter chose the platform for a new Secret deodorant campaign aimed at young women.
“P.& G. wants to be where the people are, and more and more people are spending their time on social sites,” says Alex Tosolini, vice president of Procter’s global e-business unit. “The purpose of our Secret campaign was to inspire women of all ages to be more fearless.”
It’s a message that sounds similar to Ms. Sandberg’s. And it bumped domestic sales of Secret deodorant by 9 percent in the first six months of the campaign and raised Secret’s market share by 5 percent from the period a year earlier.
Glory, glory hallelujah! What great times we live in!
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
Another Reason to Tax the Rich, and Hard
There is, of course, no such thing as a $6,200 cell phone. Except, of course, that there is. It’s called the Vertu Constellation. It’s made by Nokia, and has apparently sold more than 300,000 copies.
Mental illness is obviously as epidemic as ever within the overclass.
It’s also something of an IQ test, this Vertu geegaw. See if you can spot the pseudo-intellectualisms, flatteries, and effete product differentiations in this promo blurb:
Constellation is the first handset with a full touch screen from Vertu. Designed with simple elegance at its core, each Constellation is handmade using state-of the art technologies and manufacturing techniques including 8 megapixel camera with ruby surround, hard worked leather and our unique high fidelity sounds system. With one delicate touch you can navigate effortlessly and intuitive [sic] to explore the exclusive services available and a range of carefully curated apps providing bespoke services and information at your fingertips.
Lulz and barfz.
Thursday, September 15th, 2011
Foxes Blame Farmer for Henhouse Massacre
So, the CBS Evening News has been running a series of interviews with important figures it holds, in its unwavering commitment to objective journalism, to have special insight and ability to diagnose what’s wrong with the U.S. economy. Who are these figures, to whom we are supposed to defer? You guessed it: Corporate CEOs!
Take a look at this clip of Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz:
Schultz acknowledges that capitalists are hoarding cash. Why are they doing that, according to him? “The only reason is…the anxiety and uncertainty that exists about the political system.”
One could certainly ask CBS why a billionaire who started a coffee shop and holds that highest and most relevant of intellectual credentials – a 1975 bachelor’s degree in Communications from Northern Michigan University – gets to say anything on national TV about what ails the political economy in 2011.
Anyhow, let’s instead change the characters here, shall we? Let’s imagine that foxes have been devouring hens from the henhouse on Farmer Smith’s farm.
CBS: Mr. Fox and Farmer Smith, why are there so few hens in the henhouse these days? How do we rebuild the population in there? Mr. Fox, since you invented farming, let’s start with you. What the problem out there?
Fox: Well, we all know how delicious hens are [belches and picks teeth], don’t we? The one and only reason they are dwindling has to do with how Farmer Smith is paying for the tractor. Will he use cash? His credit card? How can we foxes know what to do next, when we have such a crisis of confidence about that tractor payment?
Farmer Smith: Some might say I should put a door on the henhouse and start shooting foxes. But everybody knows foxes are the engine of any productive farm, so we must actually open the windows on the henhouse, too. Meanwhile, I’ll be meeting with my neighbor farmers to consider how we should pay off our tractors. Soon, we’ll all be up to our elbows in chickens!
Monday, September 12th, 2011
Now We Know: Jackie Kennedy Was a Moron
This has to do with political marketing, but check out what the upper-class bimbo Jackie O had to say about reality. If MLK was a fraud, what, pray tell, was JFK?
As usual, you have to look at places like TCT for any actual logic on these topics, despite the supposed central glory of the personages involved.
Now we know why they sat on this for 47 years. What a pinhead!
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011
Towels: The Latest Enemy of Capitalism
As somebody once observed, capitalism is a system that cannot stop, cannot rest, cannot respect any boundaries, must colonize everything as it drives its players to “nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere…over the whole face of the globe.”
In this unending totalitarian thrust, any activity that leaves room for further commodification will eventually be seized upon and efforts will be made to increase the degree to which it employs maximally profitable corporate wares. In the process, nothing counts but the bottom line.
And so it is that our old friend the Kimberly-Clark conglomerate is now pushing Kleenex brand hand towels, on the theory that cloth towels are a dire public health risk. Words can’t do justice to the amazing chutzpah of this campaign:
The shamelessness of this stunning proof of capital’s inherent heedlessness does not, of course, stop Kimberly-Clark from claiming that it “challenges itself” to “respect our planet and conserve its resources.”
Orwell was an amateur compared to this stuff.
Thursday, January 20th, 2011
More Howlers from Hewson
Speaking of smarmy and dishonest shills for capitalism, our favorite musically tapped-out tax-dodging huckster megalomaniac is back at it. From among the latest batch:
The United States is “a nation that finds joy in the impossible.”
The Kennedys, the missile-gapping stiffers of MLK, the architects of escalation and covert regime change (when their boy Diem started displaying signs of softness) in Vietnam, “had no patience for the status quo.”
The Peace Corps “changed the world” and did something — something unnamed, of course — to reduce poverty and injustice.
Going to Catholic Mass every day? Not a pathetic, anachronistic, pointless, holier-than-thou gesture, but “an act of rebellion against brutal modernity.”
Love that soft-hearted, tender, indulgent, not brutal stuff the Mass-meisters did before we went and got all modern…
Well, anyhow, you do have to hand it to somebody with the capacity to lie to himself and others at this level and still keep his legs moving.
