................................. To leave Commie, hyper to http://commie.oy.com/commie_leaving.html ................................. I forward this, in case peepuls are innerested. ----- Forwarded message from Carrie McLaren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----- Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2001 16:49:49 -0400 To: "Stay Free" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> From: Carrie McLaren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Stay Free! | 5 February 2001 Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] NEW YORK EVENT - FEB 23 New York University is having a one-day conference on anti-corporate activism ("culture jamming") this month, and so in an effort to combat my #1 phobia (not counting cockroaches), I'm going to give a little talk..... so will Reverend Billy and folks from Billionaires for Bush or Gore, Dyke Action Machine, and Green Maps, and others. Friday, Feb. 23 FREE! NYU, Jurow Hall, Main Building 100 Washington Square East For more details look here: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/media/html/cultjamsch.html GAG OF THE WEEK In an effort to insure that its embarrassing reality show "Temptation Island" has no redeeming value whatsoever, Fox Broadcasting has refused to run a commercial for a contraceptive (a spermicide called Encare) during the program. According to a Fox rep, quoted in WSJ 2/1/01, the network doesn't run ads for birth control products _unless they mention disease_. (!) Too bad this bizarre logic (promiscuity is fine but contraception isn't?!) doesn't apply the Fox's programming or maybe we'd REALLY have something fun to watch; imagine the inhabitants of Temptation Island having to discuss gonorrhea before sleeping with one of the models. SUPERBOWL Competition for the worst Superbowl commercial this year was FIERCE, particularly among ads catering to a singular theme: "people bad, products good." Three commercials went for cheap yuks by portraying paramours who lie to or kill their sweetie (a guy fakes sick so he can ditch his wife and ride around in an SUV; a woman disposes of her couch potato boyfriend / husband with the help of a vacuum cleaner; and an office slug sits and tosses pencils in the ceiling to avoid going out with his SO). But the grand prize goes to the Pepsi spot in which a young white guy subjects himself to--gross!--sitting next to people on the subway. He copes by fantasizing about leaping into an ad that he sees on the train and joining the scantily clad bathing beauties pictured therein. Unfortunately for our hero, his vision is ruined when he imagines the people on the subway in the pool with him. (At which point I fantasized about getting the woman from a Snickers commercial to drop a couch on him.) Oh, will the comedy ever end... NEW ON THE SITE Just added piece by Jay Huber from the most recent issue of the magazine: The High Cost of Free Speech: In US courts, freedom of speech increasingly means freedom to advertise http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/17/freespeech.html Also, for those keeping track of the free speech issue, there's a new case worth noting: A guy in California, Mark Kasky, has filed suit against Nike for false advertising. The false statements in question were about Nike's labor practices -- they did not appear in ads, but were in press releases, letters to university presidents, and Nike's web pages. This raises some interesting questions: can PR campaigns be held accountable to the same "truth" standards as advertising? Or will commercial speech, in this instance, be considered political speech, which is protected as free speech? If the distinction between commercial speech and free speech holds, then it would be illegal for the commercial party--Nike--to lie but not necessarily its critics. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/29/MN1 34078.DTL A curious sidenote: the ACLU has weighed in on the matter -- in support of Nike. The ACLU has filed an "amicus curiae" brief stating that the company's speech cannot "be denied full First Amendment protection on the ground that the communication may also bring commercial benefit to the speaker." In other words, the ACLU says that Nike and other corporations should be allowed to lie to the public about labor practices, under the First Amendment. Anyway, the ACLU's position on this one reminds me of a particularly prescient ONION article: "ACLU Defends Nazi's Right To Burn Down ACLU Headquarters" http://www.theonion.com/onion3211/acludefends.html more later, carrie
