I figured this was appropriate given the day.

Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood is a movie about advertising directed at kids and the impact it has.  It does a nice job of detailing tactics that commercial entities use to influence consumer behavior in children.  At the same time it seems to want to start a moral panic and gives some real bad advice as to how to prevent kids from being marketed towards.  Also it uses clips from some videos in a disingenuous manner.  For example it repeatedly shows scenes where ultra-consumerist actions are being portrayed in a negative fashion on children’s programing and spins them to make the audience believe the program may have tried to place those actions in a positive light.  While these issues detracted from my enjoyment of the program, in the broad sense I found the program to be a insightful look at advertising directed at kids.

Here’s the trailer and more comments follow after the break:

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While reading MR Zine, a state socialist online magazine, I came across an interesting article.  In a nutshell the author talks about how he attended an MR event and someone stole his girlfriend’s coat.  It’s interesting to read his comments about how he can’t imagine a communist doing this.  I’m not going to go the route of taking a cheap property rights shot at the poor guy, or knock the violence inherent in his beliefs.  Chances are the author and I agree on a majority of political points.  I am however going to use the article to make a point about political thought and how it changes.

Personal experiences weigh much more heavily in developing one’s beliefs than anything you’ll ever read in a book or see on TV.  The economy can be going to pot and people can be shouting about it in the streets, but until you have a personal experience that you can link to the problem, it is almost meaningless.  Ideas change at the human scale.  The fact that I smiled and waved at a cop yesterday and he stared me down like a fugitive does more to bolster my dislike for police officers than reading about someone getting shot.  I feel that this is true for the majority of people.

So if you want to associate with people and discuss these sort of things, my advice would be to remember that the personal is what matters most to others.  Take the time to listen to people, try to understand what has happened in their life.  You’ll both benefit from the exchange.

The fun propaganda you find in the NYC public transit system. There are more but I didn’t get a chance to snap a photo of them.

I wish we had this kind of thing today. I think they forgot the part about how they inflated before the depression though.

I’d like to see a 30’s propaganda video based on America’s Great Depression.

Obama has his own songs too… coincidence?