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Dirty words and sexy talk always get it on
Expanded from the 10-9-2011 Daily Sparks Tribune
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Corporate Propaganda Research Archive
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
That's how it goes. Everybody knows.
HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins 3rd straight Nevada Press Association First-Place Award
In 2011, we go for the SombreroBarbwire.TV
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SUING FOR SCHOOLS
Updated 8-30-2011
Now rerunning on Carson-Dayton 226
Additional programs on Boulder City cable. Go to bcnv.org and then
go to the BCTV link.If Reform Fails: Health Care, Jobs and Unions — new power to the people on the public airwaves
The program premiers were available to every television set in the region because of a high-mileage media hybrid.
The shows appeared on both commercial and community stations. The non-corporate entity produced the events, commercial TV greatly expanded distribution.
Thus began an ongoing series of sane public interest programs which generate both entertaining heat and more than a little light.
Please spread the word and consider contributing to the cause online at ReSurge.TV.
You may also take the public option known as the U.S. Postal Service and send a check or money order to ReSurge.TV, P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510.
Your contribution will help fund the distribution as well as ongoing efforts at developing new media, including a regional, non-corporate community radio station and the return of community television to Reno-Sparks-Washoe.
You are present at the creation of what I hope can become a new media model where the programming accurately reflects what's happening on the ground and the media impact is powerful enough to forcefully pass the message upward.
Thanks.
Be well. Raise hell.
Andrew
Click here for selected on-demand re-runs from the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Barbwire.TV archivesBarbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success
Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
Highlights from radio days
mp3 file
HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins 3rd straight Nevada Press Association First-Place Award
In 2011, we go for the SombreroOh, you horny little devils. You are now out of the closet.
The fact that sex sells is not news. I am, however, gratified that sex still sells newspapers.
Two weeks ago, this column was headlined Dirty books, holy men, false prophets and sex profits.
By noontime on Sunday, it far outstripped the number of page views for other Tribune commentators.
Last Sunday's When money owns you concerned that thing closest to your heart: your wallet.
Who won, sex or money? Dumb question. The hot and sweaty smoked filthy lucre by an almost four-to-one margin by mid-day.
Both pieces were filled with the usual outrages but apparently the old advertising axiom remains true: It's all in the packaging. The piece with the sexy headline still leads by more than three to one.
Not that I couldn't have figured that out without the modern innovation of page counters. I've even tried cloaking my favorite consumer outrage in suggestive language.
Spend your Memorial Day weekend working to make gasoline sexy I implored in 1997.Zzzz.
Last March, I tried hooking it up with the sexiest man in America: Charley Sheen and the price of gasoline.
Alas, not even sex can create widespread interest in the pernicious petrol prices perpetrated by BigOil's domestic cartel.
Sex sells even better during bad economic times. Great Depression One coincided with the fabled golden age of Hollywood. Then, as now, real unemployment hovered around 25 percent. People sought escape in movie theaters. Hollywood pushed the envelope so far that it caused a backlash.
Jean Harlow firmed up her nipples with ice before going on camera in a sheer blouse.
Dolores del Rio's gorgeous tush was on display for all the world to see as she swam naked underwater with Joel McCrea in 1932's Bird of Paradise.
The motion picture code was imposed in 1934 to stop all that foolishness, which is why Lucy and Ricky Ricardo slept in twin beds but somehow managed to produce the first prime time pregnancy.
Which leads me to the point of this column: hungry children.Sorry for the misleading packaging.
A few days ago, I was sickened by a Food Bank of Northern Nevada press release forwarded by the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada.
"A free nutritious dinner is now being served for all children and youth ages 1-18," it announced.
"Dinners are served at 27 locations. All children/youth are welcome and do not need to be enrolled in an after-school program to eat at Kids Cafe. For more information, call 775-331-3663 or visit www. fbnn.org," the release stated.
Zounds.
So many local children can't get enough to eat at home that free meals are being served Monday through Friday at 27 local schools. It should come as no surprise that none of them are in the upper class neighborhoods of the southern parts of the Truckee Meadows.
The food is available Monday through Friday, which makes me wonder what these kids do for proper nutrition on weekends and holidays like Columbus Day.
I think it's great that commie-liberal Big Government is using some of its bloated deficit-spending budget to feed hungry youngsters. Better to cook meals for children than build bombs to burn brown people on the sands of Araby and central Asia.
Here in the biggest, baddest, fattest, richest nation in the history of the world, more than one in five children live in poverty.
Token black Republican presidential candidate Pizzaman Cain spewed his solution a few days ago: If you're not rich, it's your fault. Work.
But how can you work your way up to the millionaire mark of Cain if there are no jobs?
Some yahoo on my Facebook page advised youthful anti-Wall Street marchers to give up demonstrating and start a business instead. How freaking conservative.
These bastards perpetuate the fiction that you can win against a stacked deck and a cheating dealer.
Nonetheless, sucker bets offering impossible odds are the most popular with the poor. Travesties like lotteries represent the only shot they've got to make it to Cain country.
Meanwhile, a growing number of families can't afford a Godfather's Pizza on their best day.
I keep hearing criticism from right-wing moonhowlers that the burgeoning movement stands for nothing.
When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.
I was particularly impressed by a young man camped out on Wall Street. He is homeless but has a master's degree that cost him $80,000 in student loans, a debt that not even bankruptcy can discharge.
As I noted last week, control of the debt is everything. Control debt and you control nations and lives.
I hope organized labor is successful in assisting the kids who are taking it to the streets.
Unions can help organize a national strike, one of three remaining things that can right this listing ship. The other two are far scarier: armed revolution or the slow breakup of the United States into regions organized out of necessity when the national government has totally failed.
That rumbling you hear is far more widespread and ominous than the stomachs of hungry children.
I'll see you at the movies and on the picket lines, you sexy things.
U-TUBE. Check the expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com for the latest statewide Barbwire.TV schedule, viewable 24/7 online.Support the return of community radio and television in these parts. Go to ReSurge.TV to volunteer your time or treasure or both.
It's now more important than ever — > unless you think corporate-controlled media is all you need. Stay tuned for updates.
Be well. Raise hell.
______
Andrew Barbano is a 43-year Nevadan, chair of the Nevada César Chávez Committee, producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Check local listings for other Nevada cable systems. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Daily Sparks Tribune since 1988.
Smoking Guns
POWERFUL PUNDITORY PANJANDRUMS: Compelling guest commentary
Nevada Press Assn. annual award winners announced.
HAT TRICK: Barbwire takes first place for third year in a row.
This year, we go for the sombrero.The winning entries:
Suing for Schools: The 20-year shuck
Expanded from the 2-21-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune
Click here to view the show on your desktopRED flags flying low over Sparks
Expanded from the 1-10-2010 Daily Sparks TribuneThe wrath of self-righteous racism
Expanded from the 11-8-2009 Daily Sparks Tribune
And they wonder why the newspaper business is dying?
The Dean's List
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006
The 2009 first-place Nevada Press Association award winners
Tony the Tiger & the flaky NFL
Barbwire / 11-30-2008
Deregulation is never having to say you're sorry
Barbwire / 8-3-2008
Nevada: A good place to visit, but do you want to live here?
Barbwire / 6-15-2008
The price of a piece / 6-17-2007
Boxing Pandora /9-23-2007
The Lady in the Red Dress
10-28-2007
Fact-free nation: Inside the lie machine
Mother Jones Magazine May-June 2011 / Cover story and in-depth analysis
Bill Moyers: Welcome to the Plutocracy
Money fights hard and it fights dirty
Speech delivered at Boston University on 29 Oct. 2010
Part of the Howard Zinn Lecture SeriesBarbwire Corporate Welfare Archive
Cabellyup.com
TOLJASO LONG TIME AGO
BP/ARCO: The greasy root of our evils
Barbwire / Daily Sparks Tribune 9-10-2006
The awful truth — Read it and weep, fellow suckersLabor Day 2009: Rise of the Vampire Corpobots
Expanded from the 9-6-2009 Daily Sparks TribuneAngry Americans and Freudian fraud
Using war to market cigarettes
Expanded from the 8-23-2009 Daily Sparks TribuneBARBWIRE Nevada Corporate Welfare Archive
Propaganda fuels gasoline price fixing
Barbwire 8-14-2005Donate to the cable ratepayer legal defense fund at our PayPal-enabled ReSurge.TV Consumer War Room
Phillips, Kevin; Numbers Racket: Why the economy is worse than we know
Harper's Magazine; May 2008; page 43
Phillips has authored numerous books on history and politics over the past 40 years. His most recent, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, was published by Viking on April 15, 2008.NAOMI WOLF: Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps
There are some things common to every state that's made the transition to fascism. Author Naomi Wolf argues that all of them are present in America today.
Alternet 5-20-2007Johnson, Chalmers; REPUBLIC OR EMPIRE? A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States; Harper's magazine; January, 2007. I love it when heavy hitters validate what I've been saying for years in the tiny Sparks Tribune.
Barlett, Donald L. and Steele, James B.; America: What Went Wrong? (1992); America: Who Really Pays the Taxes? (1994); America: Who Stole the Dream? (1996) ; Andrews & McMeel/Universal Press Syndicate.
Review of Alex Carey's Taking the Risk Out of Democracy:
Propaganda in the US and AustraliaThe Orwell Diversion by Alex Carey
Excerpted from the book available below
ORDER Taking the Risk Out of Democracy
Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty
By Alex Carey
Edited by Andrew Lohrey
Foreword by Noam Chomsky
University of Illinois Press
SEE ALSO: Lapham, Lewis H.; Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Mill, A Brief History; Harper's Magazine cover article; September, 2004, page 32.
By one conservative estimate, the corporate right has spent about $3 billion over the past three decades manufacturing public opinion to suit big business goals. Lapham's number covered the early 1970's to the present day. Alex Carey noted that by 1948, anti- New Deal corporate propaganda expenditures had already reached $100 million per year, not adjusted for inflation, for advertising alone. (Carey, ibid; page 79)
Adjusted for inflation, that 1948 $100 million becomes $801,659,751.04 in 2005 dollars.
Conservatives Help Wal-Mart, and Vice Versa
As Wal-Mart struggles to rebut growing criticism, it has discovered a reliable ally: conservative research groups.
New York Times 9-8-2006; Free registration may be required.BARBWIRE: Labor Day '94: People vs. corporate con job, 9-4-94
Chilling forecasts from Alex CareyBARBWIRE: The Nevada Republican Party Becomes Communist, 3-30-97
A prescient Plato on the dangers of oligarchyThe sands of time do not cloud the long memories of the sheiks of Araby
Barbwire 9-10-2006
Rinfret, Pierre A.; Peace is Bullish; Look magazine, 5-31-1966
Copyright © 1982-2011
Andrew Barbano
Andrew Barbano is a 43-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee, He is producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as first vice-president, political action chair and webmaster of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.
Barbwire by Barbano premiered in the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in those parts ever since. Tempus fugit.
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