Media Literacy - The Art of the Prank

August 23, 2007January 15, 2019

Teen-Age Booby Trap

An Armchair Analysis of Teen-Age Booby Trap: 1970 US Government Comic Book on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs
by Ethan Persoff

Part One: Introduction

There’s an old joke played with food, popular with kids. Goes like this: You hand someone a piece of something to eat and just as they are about to take a bite, you say a word completely opposite to what they’re about to taste. Example can be handing them a piece of creamy chocolate, and saying the word: ‘Glue’ or ‘Toenails’ right as they are chewing. It works every time. The brain struggles for half a second, and the experience of tasting is affected. This form of tampering is not just child’s play. It is a highly effective means of affecting somebody’s experience before they attempt consuming something.

Imagine reading a food review saying a restaurant got you sick. Would you eat there? For over fifty years the US government has played this suggestive food game again and again, creating a number of pieces of dishonest art and text about the consumption of mind-altering drugs. The high-water mark for both cautionary messaging and artwork can be found in a little known (but highly sought-after) comic book produced in 1970 by the US Bureau of Narcotics & Dangerous Drugs, entitled Teenage Booby Trap. Scans of this entire document are available at http://www.ep.tc/teenageboobytrap/

Continue reading “Teen-Age Booby Trap”

August 21, 2007January 15, 2019

The American Media Hologram

A Feast of Bullshit and Spectacle:
The Great American Media Mind Warp
by Joe Bageant
MediaChannel.org
August 8, 2007

Needless to say, the Middle Eastern doctors accused of terrorism in Scotland may be guilty as hell. Mohammed Asha may be another one of your standard terror wogs who, as we all know by now, relish the idea of prison or perhaps blowing up his wife and baby up for Allah.

But having been in the media business one way or another for almost 40 years, and having watched it increasingly take on a life of its own, I know that nothing of significance in the news is what it appears to be. This is not the result of some media conspiracy, mind you, but rather that the people working in the media have internalized the process so thoroughly they do not even know they are conditioned creatures in a larger corporate/state machine. Put simply, Katie Couric and the dumbshits grinding out your local paper actually believe they are in the news business. In today”s system, everybody is a patsy for the new corporate global order of things “” the well-coiffed talking head, the brain dead audience, even the terrorists themselves. All play out their parts in our holographic image and information process. Continue reading “The American Media Hologram”

August 17, 2007January 15, 2019

Savvy by Proxy

Karl Rove and the Religion of the Washington Press
by Jay Rosen
PressThink
August 14, 2007

Conservatives think the ideology of the Washington press corps is liberal. Liberals think the press is conservative in the sense of protecting its place in the political establishment. Karl Rove once said that the press is “less liberal than it is oppositional.” (A fascinating remark coming from Rove, since it apppears to put him at odds with the conservative base.)

Whereas I believe that the real””and undeclared””ideology of American journalism is savviness, and this is what made the press so vulnerable to the likes of Karl Rove.

Savviness! Deep down, that”s what reporters want to believe in and actually do believe in”” their own savviness and the savviness of certain others (including operators like Karl Rove.) In politics, they believe, it”s better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts. It”s better to be savvy than it is to be just, good, fair, decent, strictly lawful, civilized, sincere or humane.

Savviness is what journalists admire in others. Savvy is what they themselves dearly wish to be. (And to be unsavvy is far worse than being wrong.) Savviness””that quality of being shrewd, practical, well-informed, perceptive, ironic, “with it,” and unsentimental in all things political””is, in a sense, their professional religion. They make a cult of it. And it was this cult that Karl Rove understood and exploited for political gain. Continue reading “Savvy by Proxy”

August 17, 2007January 15, 2019

Next is the Constitution

What edits on Wikipedia have been made by people in congressional offices, the CIA and the Church of Scientology? A new online tool called WikiScanner reveals answers to such questions.

Is The CIA Editing Wikipedia?
by Brian Bergstein
Time.com/AP
August 15, 2007

As the Web encyclopedia that anyone can edit, Wikipedia encourages participants to adopt online user names, but it also lets contributors be identified simply by their computers’ numeric Internet addresses.

Often that does not provide much of a cloak, such as when PCs in congressional offices were discovered to have been involved in Wikipedia entries trashing political rivals.

Those episodes inspired Virgil Griffith, a computer scientist about to enter grad school at CalTech, to automate the process with WikiScanner. (It’s at http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr but intense attention has knocked it out of service many times this week.) Read the full story here.

Thanks Toni Dalton

July 29, 2007January 15, 2019

Keeping it in Czech

Submitted by Peter Schlager:

Czech Dream (ÄŒeskà½ sen in Czech) is a documentary film directed by two young Czech directors, Vàt Klusà¡k and Filip Remunda. It records a large-scale hoax perpetuated by Klusà¡k and Remunda on the Czech public, culminating in the “opening event” of a fake “hypermarket”. The filmmakers succeeded in attracting more than 3 thousand shoppers to an empty plain for their “grand opening” on May 31, 2003. What looked like a huge building from a distance was actually only a canvas facade backed by scaffolding.

The film hit selected theaters in the U.S. starting in June. Check here for the remaining dates in September for Seattle and Chicago.

The “bloody trailer” and a film scene can be downloaded here. Bloody trailer is in quotes because there appears to be a “blood-free” trailer which may be more aligned with reality (both are available on the DVD which is for sale).

Here’s some movie footage [9:30]: Continue reading “Keeping it in Czech”