Beer Ad Shows 'Ho White' and 7 Dwarves

clipped from: www.myfoxla.com   

Beer Ad Shows 'Ho White' and 7 Dwarves

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Disney is reportedly up in arms over an Australian beer ad that depicts Snow White and the seven dwarves in bed.

clipped from: media.wwono.com   

clipped from: www.myfoxla.com   

The Telegraph reports
that in the ad for Jamieson's Raspberry Ale, Snow White is shown
blowing smoke rings while lying in bed with half-clothed dwarves. But
she's been renamed "Ho White" and dwarves Sleepy, Happy and Doc have
been renamed Filthy, Smarmy and Randy.

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Australian ad agency the Foundry told Sydney's Daily Telegraph
that it wanted to promote the beer as "anything but sweet." The Foundry
claims that it had "a little bit of contact" with Disney regarding the
ad.

A Web site promoting the new ad had reportedly been set up
at anythingbutsweet.com, but the site appears to have been pulled down
since the controversy began.

clipped from: www.telegraph.co.uk   

clipped from: www.myfoxla.com   

Disney, which owns the copyright for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, has not issued a comment about the ad.

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See a photo of the ad .

How Iago Explains the World - NYTimes.com

Image by what gets me hot via Flickr

How Iago Explains the World - NYTimes.com

October 11, 2009
How Iago Explains the World
By LEE SIEGEL

Peter Sellars, the avant-garde director known for staging classical plays and operas in joltingly contemporary settings, has once again aroused controversy with an unorthodox production of a canonical work.

This time it’s “Othello,” now running at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in Greenwich Village. Mr. Sellars has updated Shakespeare’s tragedy of jealousy and revenge with cellphones, Blackberrys and wall monitors.

But Mr. Sellars needn’t have bothered with all the new technology. The play itself speaks to one of the most salient confusions of our time: the conflict between transparency and secrecy.

The character who best exemplifies this theme is the villain, Iago. An “ensign” or aide-de-camp to Othello, a general in the Venetian army, Iago is enraged when passed over for a promotion, and schemes to destroy the hero he feels has betrayed and belittled him.

For all his uncontrolled anger, Iago is the most calculating of avengers, who as he plots Othello’s downfall knows he must conceal his true objectives behind the appearance of goodwill:

For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, ’tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

For Iago, success lies in never being what he seems. He manipulates appearances, lies without remorse, and cultivates opacity the way some men work on their abs.

He is the ideal forerunner of so many contemporary dissemblers — the deceitful politician, clergyman, athlete or entertainer; the conniving money manager; the prevaricating realtor; the online sexual predator. Iago takes deception to the highest possible level. He becomes the ultimate creature of secrets, the man whose petty grievance doesn’t match his outsize fury. He is driven by “motiveless malignity, ” in the phrase coined for him by the 19th-century poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Iago’s love of secrecy is all the more disturbing because it contrasts so starkly with the openness and candor personified by Othello, who not only believes all men “shouldst be honest,” but seems to think many really are.

But Shakespeare’s tragedy suggests that transparency and secrecy are not simply opposites. Instead they interact, each reinforcing the other. As events rush to their conclusion, the audience knows that Othello’s naïve trust in outward appearances, his “free and open nature,” as Iago contemptuously calls it, not only feeds Iago’s ego but also leads Othello to be untrue to himself and obliterate everything he cherishes.

And this, in turn, raises questions of particular relevance today. In 21st-century America, the quest for openness, so often pursued in the name of democracy, can lead to the violation of a sacred democratic principle: the right to privacy. Reality television, for example, promises to pry other people’s secrets wide open, but in so doing has exposed the participants’ off-screen lives to endless scrutiny. So too, in the case of celebrities, the post-death excavation of secrets — for instance in the case of Michael Jackson — has become a gleeful shared ritual.

No wonder Ricky Gervais’ new movie, “The Invention of Lying,” has provoked an uneasy response. A comic portrayal of a world in which everyone tells the truth, all the time, the film seriously proposes that honesty is sometimes the most destructive policy.

Transparency can also be dangerous in the world of public policy, as the current health-care debate has shown. It is hard to remember a time when the specifics of any legislative process, let alone one so complex, have been so open to public scrutiny. The Obama administration was especially sensitive to accusations of secrecy, since the closed-door deliberations of the Clinton administration’s initiative is commonly believed to have doomed it in 1994.

Yet Mr. Obama’s decision to pull aside the curtain left the emerging proposals available “for daws to peck at” — the daws in this case being flocks of lobbyists, interest groups and assorted organizations that rallied opposition to health-care reform.

Or take the administration’s internal debate over Afghanistan. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s public warning that the war might be lost if Mr. Obama rejected his call for 40,000 new troops gave the impression of divided and indecisive political leadership. In both cases, secrecy — or at least reticence —might have served the White House better.

This is not to say that Mr. Obama himself is universally credited with having a “free and open nature.” On the contrary, he is often accused of being a deceiver. Some conservatives say he is a “big-government” liberal, who, as a candidate, disguised himself in the sheep’s clothing of a centrist. Some liberals object that he won their backing by appearing to advocate policies — for instance, legalizing gay marriage — he has since backed away from.

Mr. Obama is not alone in treading the troubled new border separating transparency from secrecy. Last June, Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina used the word “honesty” to defend his marital infidelity. And the tear-stained spasms of Glenn Beck, the right-wing’s cable star of the moment, recall Iago’s emphasis on the importance of impressing observers with “heavenly shows” of sincerity.

This might be called opaque transparency. And it appears to be all the rage just now. David Letterman’s recent confession that he had sexual relationships with employees was woven so skillfully into his standard monologue that it seemed a new permutation in the theater of public openness, one in which an acknowledgment of misconduct was transformed into judgment-neutralizing entertainment. Here, too, Iago’s histrionics might be instructive. When Othello questions his veracity, Iago audaciously pretends to regret having been too candid. “Take note, take note, O world: To be direct and honest is not safe.”

The moral agony of “Othello” is, in fact, that its bone-chilling villain is the only character who is in possession of the play’s truth. Through his machinations, Iago demonstrates that directness and honesty are, indeed, not safe — and in fact never are — because the overly transparent victim sometimes invites the predator’s manipulations and so becomes complicit with him.

Honesty and transparency, Shakespeare’s great play suggests, are two different things. As Othello learns too late, the “ocular proof” of truth is not by any means the same as truth itself.

Lee Siegel’s most recent book is "Against the Machine: How the Web Is Reshaping Culture and Commerce — And Why It Matters."

No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund - NYTimes.com

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No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund - NYTimes.com

October 24, 2009
No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund
By TAMAR LEWIN

Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses.

They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect.

“We see it as an acknowledgment by the leading baby video company that baby videos are not educational, and we hope other baby media companies will follow suit by offering refunds,” said Susan Linn, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which has been pushing the issue for years.

Baby Einstein, founded in 1997, was one of the earliest players in what became a huge electronic media market for babies and toddlers. Acquired by Disney in 2001, the company expanded to a full line of books, toys, flashcards and apparel, along with DVDs including “Baby Mozart,” “Baby Shakespeare” and “Baby Galileo.”

The videos — simple productions featuring music, puppets, bright colors, and not many words — became a staple of baby life: According to a 2003 study, a third of all American babies from 6 months to 2 years old had at least one “Baby Einstein” video.

Despite their ubiquity, and the fact that many babies are transfixed by the videos, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time at all for children under 2.

In 2006, Ms. Linn’s group went to the Federal Trade Commission to complain about the educational claims made by Disney and another company, Brainy Baby. As a result, the companies dropped the word “educational” from their marketing. But the group didn’t think that was enough.

“Disney was never held accountable, and parents were never given any compensation. So we shared our information and research with a team of public health lawyers,” Ms. Linn said.

Last year, lawyers threatened a class-action lawsuit for unfair and deceptive practices unless Disney agreed to refund the full purchase price to all who bought the videos since 2004. “The Walt Disney Company’s entire Baby Einstein marketing regime is based on express and implied claims that their videos are educational and beneficial for early childhood development,” a letter from the lawyers said, calling those claims “false because research shows that television viewing is potentially harmful for very young children.”

The letter cited estimates from The Washington Post and Business Week that Baby Einstein controlled 90 percent of the baby media market, and sold $200 million worth of products annually.

The letter also described studies showing that television exposure at ages 1 through 3 is associated with attention problems at age 7.

In response, the Baby Einstein company will refund $15.99 for up to four “Baby Einstein” DVDs per household, bought between June 5, 2004, and Sept. 5, 2009, and returned to the company.

Lawyers in the matter refused to comment on the settlement.

Last month, Baby Einstein announced the new refunds — or “enhanced consumer satisfaction guarantee” — but made no mention of the lawyers’ demands.

"Fostering parent-child interaction always has and always will come first at The Baby Einstein Company, and we know that there is an ongoing discussion about how that interaction is best promoted,” Susan McLain, vice president and general manager, said in the statement. “We remain committed to providing a wide range of options to help parents create the most engaging and enriching experience for themselves and their babies.”

The founder and president of Brainy Baby, Dennis Fedoruk, said in an e-mail message that he was unaware of Baby Einstein’s refund announcement and could not offer further comment.

An outside public relations representative for Baby Einstein said there was nothing new about the refund offer.

“We’ve had a customer satisfaction guarantee for a long time,” she said, referring a reporter to the company Web site. However, Baby Einstein’s general “money-back” guarantee is only valid for 60 days from purchase and requires a receipt.

In contrast, the current offer, allowing parents to exchange their video for a different title, receive a discount coupon, or get $15.99 each for up to four returned DVDs, requires no receipt, and extends until next March 10.

“When attention got focused on this issue a few years ago, a lot of companies became more cautious about what they claimed,” said Vicky Rideout, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “But even if the word ‘education’ isn’t there, there’s a clear implication of educational benefits in a lot of the marketing.”

The Baby Einstein Web site, for example, still describes its videos with phrases like “reinforces number recognition using simple patterns” or “introduces circles, ovals, triangles, squares and rectangles.”

“My impression is that parents really believe these videos are good for their children, or at the very least, not really bad for them,” Ms. Rideout said. “To me, the most important thing is reminding parents that getting down on the floor to play with children is the most educational thing they can do.”

I'D HEARD MOST OF THIS IN VIDEOS BUT IT'S A WHOLE DIFFERENT THING TO LISTEN TO IT TOGETHER...TRUST ME

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