Timothy Birdnow

Last night my wife and I killed the evening listening to music  off the internet. I would tootle along with my recorder to old songs while she acted as D.J. While browsing around we found a site that played a collection of '60's and '70's cartoon theme songs, interspersed with the old commercials from that era. It was fun; they played the theme songs for cartoons I had long forgotten and commercials advertising products I also had forgotten (or at least the commercials.)  Most were for toys or games (Lite Brite, slinky, Don't Spill the Beans, Kerplunk, Operation, etc.) but the real stars were the breakfast cereal commercials!  Every last one of them was for a bowl full of sugar. There was nothing with any nutritional value whatsoever! 

It got me thinking; is it any wonder my generation got so fat? I mean, we were eating this artificial material every morning for breakfast, full of carbs and sugars and preservatives. America's weight problem began with the kids just behind me in age and it kept up long after the end of the Saturday morning cartoon era thanks to efforts to stem the weight problem. But I really do think America's obesity began with those breakfast cereals.

And who did the manufacturers target? It wasn't the moms. They ran those commercials every Saturday morning and on most Sundays. Other times too, but usually after school as opposed to a time when the family was all watching something. The advertisers knew exactly what they were doing.

They knew that if they could convince the kids the kids would badger the parents into buying these poisonous compounds and feed them until they were of veal-like consistency.

I should know; I was one. I gained a lot of weight when I was just a very small child, and breakfast cereals was no small part of my weight problem.

My father tried hard. He used to buy healthy cereals - Heartland, which I actually liked but was expensive, less often Grapenuts. He would make us oatmeal in the morning if he had time. (My mother was a night owl and always slept in - especially Saturday mornings when I was up at the crack of dawn to watch all the cartoons.) When I was old enough I would make a bowl of cereal for myself and sit and watch my shows. OR I would attempt something more creative; my grandparents used to make me cheese toast and one morning I attempted it although I didn't know how they did it exactly, so I just put a couple of pieces of cheese on some bread and popped it in the toaster. Not toaster over, toaster. The resultant burning cheese ruined our family appliance and got me in the dog house for some time. Years later my mother said she was always on pins and needles about what I would do on Saturday morning. I once sliced my thumb with a knife trying to cut some date bread and almost severed the tendon...

At any rate, the point of all this is it got me to thinking about the power of advertising and how it was used almost as a weapon on children.

It also has me thinking about the modern political crisis we are in and how it relates to advertising - and how so very many people deny claims made by many of us that the media (and by that we mean not just the news but the advertising agencies, the corporations, etc.) manipulate public opinion. A large number of Americans think that is somehow "conspiracy theory" thinking, but if so why did those companies sell us all those chemicals in a bowl through those commercials? Anybody?

Advertising works, or companies wouldn't spend money on it. And there is more to the agenda than just selling. Things near and dear to the Progressive heart are often promoted along with the product.

You really see that now. There is a plethora of commercials on now with  interracial couples, especially white men with black women. Now, this is not trying to sell a product; if so they would aim at the largest demographic, which is not interracial couples. Interracial couples make the smallest domestic households in terms of volume. And that is doubly true of white men with black women (most interracial couples are white women with black men). There is no commercial reason to have that in their advertising, but there is a blitz on now with white men being husband and father to black women and their children. It should be obvious that there is an attempt to promote such interracial marriage and reproduction.

So, why are corporations trying to promote interracial marriage? If it was just an occasional thing on the tube it would be one thing, but this has hit the airwaves in a mass campaign, obvious to even some quite liberal people. My oldest brother, who is a staunch Labor Democrat, was recently mentioning this. Even he could see there is an agenda at work, one that is aimed at changing the American mind and culture.

I'm not picking on interracial couples, just pointing out that there are forces at work manipulating public perception with advertising. Why?

We see all sorts of gay couples in ads now too. Is it really necessary at this point? The gay community has a lot of money (since they don't have to spend on children) but they were already buying. Why advertise to a market you already own?

Something is amiss here.

And more and more we are seeing "public service" commercials promoting everything from the Covid vaccine to acceptance of transgenderism.

Sometimes it's obvious who is doing it and why, but it's strange you never see anyone in opposition to the Progressive ideology appear. There are no commercials run by the NRA, or by Project Vertias. We don't have commercials showing how guns saved people's lives. We don't have commercials promoting sexual abstinence, or marriage and the family. Yet this has every bit as much and likely more commercial value as does gay or interracial marriage. Christians buy things too. And so do MAGA Americans. And so do the decent people all across the land. Yet ours is a demographic completely ignored by Madison Avenue and shut out by the mainstream networks.

Why is that?

It seems to me there very much IS a cabal of corporations and power brokers who control what America sees and hears and who attempt to turn our beliefs to their advantage. We are being gaslighted by the media.

And have been for a long, long time. Many of those old commercials were about more than just the product they were promoting. So were the cartoons. How many of them promoted hippie counter-culture back then? How many promoted traditional American values?

I saw so very many of the old shows and remembered that none of them were traditional but almost all advocated the beliefs of the hippies and the New Left.

And outside of a very few cartoons made by churches and religious folks for sunday distribution (Davey and Goliath comes to mind) almost none of them had any use for our Judeo-Christian roots.

Most promoted the counter-culture. Josey and the Pussy Cats, for example, was sexualized and pushed the rock music scene. There were multiple others. Many I liked, some I did not, but watching them now I see they were intended to teach a counter-cultural lesson.

At the time most Americans were Christian or Jewish. How does insulting the dominant culture, imposing new ethical and moral and religious standards, sell a product?

And now they are still pushing the envelope on our culture while selling products. Yes, America is less Christian or Jewish than it once was, but a majority of Americans still see themselves as Christians - by a whopping 63%!

So, why would an advertiser risk alienating the majority of shoppers?

It's clear there has been an ongoing effort to change America into something alien and I would say evil.

And since all ships sail in the same direction, one must ask who is coordinating all of this. It's clear the true masters of our society are not we the People or even our political class, who is swept along with this.

So for all of you who toss around the "conspiracy nuts" pejorative when conservatives speak about "commie collusion" I would ask you to kindly explain how insulting the beliefs of an overwhelming majority of Americans has any commercial value, and explain why they do it and who told them it was a good idea.

Watching those old shows and those old cartoons was very, very instructive.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:10 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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