Thursday, December 11, 2014

PETA vs. intelligence, femi-Nazis v. Coke's new milk and why the Sex Pistols won't reunite


- America was trending in the right direction on the issue of physical violence against women by athletes and even the NFL’s watered-down, mediocre new personal conduct policy addressing the issue was a quasi-step in the right direction. So who’s got the total lack of intelligence and propriety to hijack what should be a good thing and try to jam their own selfish views into the mix? How about the kooks of People for the Ethical Treatment of animals, that’s who. Yes, the ass hats who esteem animals higher than actual human beings is attempting to link a situation that has nothing even remotely in common with Ray Rice, Greg Hardy or any other football player accused or convicted of assaulting their lady to those ugly matters. This non-case involves Nebrasks football player Jack Gangwish, who had an unfortunate encounter with the animal kingdom recently and documented his simple stupidity on social media. Gangwish spotted the raccoon on the side of a road near Lincoln on Dec. 3 and stopped to take a selfie because, ya, know, social media. Amazingly, the raccoon failed to understand the awesomeness of its unsolicited photo op and bit Gangwish on the calf. At that point, the 6-foot-2, 260-pound defensive end returned to his truck grabbed a wrench and used it to bludgeon the raccoon to death. He then posted a picture of himself with the raccoon and followed that up with a shot of a bite mark on his leg. "Guys... I got bit by a raccoon... It just looked so soft and friendly I couldnt help it!" he wrote. Hours later, he assured his few followers that he didn’t have rabies and was fine. PETA president Ingrid Newkirk was not fine in any way and penned a lame-ass letter to Nebraska athletic director Shawn Eichorst asking the administrator to punish Gangwish. "It's time for acts of cruelty to animals committed by players to be taken extremely seriously, and with violence in football culture now under the microscope, this is the time to address the issue,” Newkirk wrote. Are you serious, moron? You’re trying to include this with actual incidents of actual human beings getting assaulted by athletes? Nice try, PETA tools………..


- This is a sure sign of a feeble government realizing it has no chance of holding down an increasingly angry populace with actual effective governance. Spain is a place with massive financial issues, a never-ending string of protests and riots, along with a litany of immigration issues stemming from the close proximity of its southern border to poor regions of northern Africa. It is the latter of those issues that led Spain's lower house of parliament to approve legislation that allows for hefty fines for protests outside parliament buildings or strategic installations. The bill also provides for the summary expulsion of migrants entering the country's North African enclaves illegally, but it is the crackdown on protests in places where they would actually have the highest visibility and impact that should be noted after the Public Security Law was approved in a 181-141 vote. The measure was loudly criticized by opposition parties and judicial and social groups as an attempt by the conservative government to muzzle protests over its handling of the severe economic crisis and because the government isn't smart enough to craft a cunning and believable lie, it has yet to respond to those accusations. When it does, look for The Man to point out that its new law is really an update of a 1992 law that includes fines of up to 30,000 euros ($37,000) for disseminating photographs of police officers that endanger them or police operations. Don’t expect this to truly stifle protests that have taken place regularly since the financial crisis hit in 2008……….


- At least iconic Sex Pistols frontman John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon is honest, even if his honesty is depressing. Lydon told an Oxford audience that unlike many other bands from the Pistols’ era, the British punk outfit would not be getting back together because, well, they’re too fat. “Oh no, that's finished. I mean have you seen us? I mean We've all put on weight but Mr. Jones here [guitarist Steve Jones] is coming it at 500 pounds and I did the butter advert,” Lydon wisecracked. He was at the fabled Oxford University's Sheldonian Theater to promote his autobiography, “Anger Is An Energy,” and after denouncing all religion as "vile, poisonous and idiotic,” he went on to rip another legendary British band, The Rolling Stones, for what he deemed an "embarrassing" performance at Glastonbury last year. Despite shooting down suggestions of a Sex Pistols reunion, Lydon said he'd give up music “only if I got bored with it, and as long as there's human being in the world, I'm not going to get bored.” When the moderator asked him if there was any sort of unofficial age limit on continuing to get on stage, Lydon replied: “No, only if you're Mick Jagger. Did anybody see last year's Glastonbury? I mean come on Mick... it's not about age here, its about the show-off bullsh*t... I wanted the Stones to give us the juice, the stuff that really put them there in the first place." He mocked Jagger for wearing ladies tights that showed off too much and embarrassing the rest of the band and said, “If I turn into that... then you're all welcome.” Welcome for what, J.? Keep making little to no sense and doing what you do………


-  Speaking of people who are overreactive, oversensitive and need to take themselves far less seriously, meet the ladies of the Everyday Sexism Project. PETA may be at the top of that list, but ESP isn't far behind based on its reaction to controversial ads that ran this summer for Coca-Cola as it makes it first foray into milk with a brand called Fairlife, which it says contains more protein and calcium than regular milk. Coke wanted to let the world know it could drink something other than second-rate soda for breakfast and so it trotted out ads for the "value-added milk” which featured pin-up girls in provocative poses and dressed in outfits that were supposed to represent milk. In essence, the images were like those of swimsuit models in Sports Illustrated wearing only body paint in place of clothing, except these shots saw a hot blonde wearing a milk dressed and carried tag lines such as: "Drink what she's wearing." Coke has already abandoned the ads, which ran in Denver and Minneapolis, but probably not for the reasons ESP founder Laura Bates would like. Bates ripped the campaign in an op-ed published last week and sounded both ignorant and stuck in the 1950s in her arguments. "This is just the latest in a never-ending stream of examples of women's bodies used as advertising fodder with scant regard for relevance or originality," she wrote. Hey L., no one forced the model to take those photos and she was paid for them with full knowledge of what she was doing, so your qualms are really with her. Sex is used to sell every product in every industry - save sewage pumping, which may never truly be sexy - and you singling out one product and one ad campaign seems to ignore a much larger reality. Nonetheless, Coke released a statement announcing the demise of the ads and their replacement with something hopefully even more offensive to femi-Nazis when the product rolls out nationwide next year. "The 'pin-ups' advertising may have been eye-catching, but we're taking a totally new approach," the company said………

No comments: