Super Bowl Commercial Skewer-a-thon

tunabomber writes: "Those planning on tuning in to America's Patriotic Sports TV Event of the Year to catch the new commercials will no longer have to sit through all that football filler. PBS, of all networks, is airing a postgame show in which the subject of discussion is not the game, but the commercials. Super Commercials: A Mental Engineering Special is a beefed-up episode of the cultish Mental Engineering series where a panel of experts, including former Daily Show host Lizz Winstead and a Silicon Valley computer scientist, critique (read: eviscerate) Super Bowl commercials. There are also blurbs about this at The Kansas City Star and The St. Paul Star Tribune." One thing you'll be able to look forward to: fewer sock puppet commercials, more anti-terror commercials.

Comments

Am I the only one...

[antistuff]

....who is totaly disgusted by the headlines in the paper today annoucing that we are going to atack coutries who have showed no aggresion towords us? And now squinty (thats what I call bush becuse of his eyes) is buying comercials linking drugs and terrorism. I rememebr when everything happened on 9/11 I had a talk with my dad whose politics are very "well its ok because America can do no wrong". He said its ok for us to atack them because we are acutlay helping them. I said thats all nice but wait and see when we wont stop. Well, it looks like we arent stoping.
I do lots of drugs and Im not a terrorist, and I get enough crap from people telling me my life style is damaging to all of society when in reality it only hurts me(and that has yet to be proven). Now the tax money Im forced to pay is going to brainwashing people into beliving that people like me are helping terrorism. The terrorists should have assasiated squinty and left all those innocent people alone.

Hmm

[Redking]

Are you ready for perpetual war?

Hmm...sounds like 1984. Yes, off-topic I know.

rk

Re:Hmm

[skribe]

It has been said before, apparently it needs to be said again: one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. A war against an abstract concept is a war without end because you can just keep moving the goal posts as you see fit. Every time someone does something you don't like you just add them to the list. While a war against Al Qaeda is not only right but just, a war against terrorism is the sort of semantic stupidity you'd expect from the President that declared a War on Poverty.

Re:Hmm

[mpe]

The war on terrorism is a completely different story. While the civil rights abuses of the USA government are alarming, the fact remains that unless stopped (killed) terrorists WILL KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE ON PURPOSE. Terrorists are evil, plain and simple. Terrorists should be hunted down and eradicated.

A "war against terrorism" is about a smeaningful as a "war against bombs". Terrorism is simply a method of persuing warfare.

And I am glad that the Americans have taken on the job of wiping out terrorists.

Except that it isn't wiping out terrorists it's a half hearted attempt to deal with terrorists the US dodn't like.

It would be nice if the american's would pause for a moment to consider why they are the most hated nation on the planet, but this is secondary compared to the importance of wiping out terrorist vermin.

One of the reasons for people not liking the US is the the US trains terrorists, supports states which user terrorism and has itself enguaged in a lot ot terrorism. Indeed the US has actually been found guilty. by the UN, of being a "terrorist state".
If the US government was serious about wiping out terrorism they'd have started with the CIA, then moved on to Israel. (Only the US and Israel opposed a UN resolution against, state sponsored, terrorism.)

Re:Hmm

[mpe]

A war against an abstract concept is a war without end because you can just keep moving the goal posts as you see fit. Every time someone does something you don't like you just add them to the list.

Which is a game more than one person/state can play. e.g. with Robert Mugabe redefining his political opponents and independent journalists as "terrorists"

While a war against Al Qaeda is not only right but just,

Al Qaeda appear to have a more clearly defined idea of "enemy". Also the people who carried out the attacks in September would probably argue that these were "right", "just" even "striking back".
In a conflict all sides bend the truth...

Re:Hmm

[skribe]

One of the reasons for people not liking the US is the the US trains terrorists, supports states which user terrorism and has itself enguaged in a lot ot terrorism.

For most of the third world's population I suggest that the hatred stems more from economics than terrorism. The IMF and the World Bank, while supposedly independent entities, are seen to be as much an agent of the United States as their military forces are. The sanctioning and support of despots and dictators, who instead of using the money loaned by the IMF to better the lives of the general populace steal it leaving the impoverished nation to pay off the billion dollar loans, is far more likely to incite anger than state sponsored violence is. At least in a campaign of violence there is an enemy that can be seen (and perhaps struck back at). But when the despot has been deposed, your children are dying because of a non-existent health system and you're under a constant threat of starving because taxes take most of what you earn to pay off the spiralling national debt (60% of GNP in the case of Pakistan I believe), who is your enemy? Who do you strike back at? Who do you hate? The most powerful and wealthiest nation on the planet.

Re:Hmm

[SubtleNuance]

WILL KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE ON PURPOSE.
Goto Chiapas, Guatemala, Panama, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Philippines, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, Cuba,..,..., tell *them* that.

Ever hear of the School of Americas? Its your own little Terrorist Training Camp.

Have you ever read this gem? http://www.antioffline.com/uscuba.html

Wow, imagine that - a pre-fabricated excuse for aggression, America(TM) would *never* do anything like that...?

The ignorance and myopia caused by America Jingoism is amazing -- and scary.

America is a Rogue Nation Out of Control.

heh

[lightfoot jim]

Lizz Winstead and a Silicon Valley computer scientist, critique (read: eviscerate)

Lizz Winstead and a Silicon Valley computer scientist, critic (read: eviscerette)

Just the commercials? Patriots beat the Steelers

[CrazyJim0]

And did you see how badly the Steelers owned the Ravens? I mean, the Ravens got stomped with plays that looked rediculous. It seemed like both the Raven and the Patroit games seemed fixed in some ways.

Patroits will win the Super Bowl, mainly because their name is "Patroits" and the government has used football in the past for social engineering.

Re:sigh...

[Guppy06]

"And in the ideal world the suggestion would be caried through to the only obvious conclusion: prohibition of illegal drugs should be ended."

Illegal drug trade helps fuel terrorism. So does illegal diamond trade, illegal weapons trade... hell, even pirated CDs can help fuel groups. By your logic, all trade should be legallized. Think of the hapless importers that are being victimized just because the Nike's they're unloading just happen to be made by child labor?

Pawn stores lose money left and right when they unwittingly buy stolen goods. So should we legallize robbery?

Bartenders can get into all sorts of legal trouble if they let an obviously drunk patron drive off. Maybe we should legallize drunk driving as well.

After all, these are my tax dollars at work...

" and funds wasted on fighting the "drug war" should be redirected towards [voluntary] treatment programs for addicts"

So the money that's spent on trying to prevent a problem should instead be spent on cleaning up after the fact? WTF? Maybe we should yank those annoying "Truth" anti-smoking ads off TV and just put the money towards niccotine patches and cancer research while we're at it...

Better yet, let's abolish the EPA. Factories are going to pollute anyway, so why don't we put the money towards buying every man, womnan and child a respirator?

When all is said and done, if the pro-drug lobby really cared about the human aspects of the drug trade, they wouldn't touch the stuff to begin with. But they do because their own few moments of bliss are worth more than the life of some poor sap in Mexico or Colombia or Thailand who has to make this stuff at gun-point. If these people are going to be so selfish as to not be able to show even the most basic level of honest-to-God empathy or altruism, then at the very least I want them to be convicted felons so they no longer have the privilege to vote and have a say in directing the governments they leech off of.

"Are you ready for perpetual war?"

I don't care what John Lenon says, there are some things that are far more valuable than peace.

Re:Fantastic

[kilgore_47]

Why should drugs have special treatment?
Again, what makes drugs so different?

Because weapons smugglers are hurting society, and pot users aren't. People are in fact LESS likely to commit violent acts while under the influence of pot. They're more likely to sit around and not hurt anybody. Pot is good for society. If the millions of drunken wife beaters in this country could legally get pot instead of liquor, do you really think our domestic violence rates wouldn't plummett?

Pot only hurts people because it's ilegal. When harmless members of society are rounded up and put in jail because they happen to light up the wrong kind of cigarette, the kind that can't be easily taxed, it ruins lives. There are millions of kids growing up without fathers because of our moronic drug policy. The instant rebuttal to that is "they wouldn't have made very good fathers anyway, being degenerate drug users". Think about that for a second. Do you honestly belive that a happy pot smoking father worse than no father at all?

In regards to your government source:
The sugestion that domestic, high quality, pot could be mixed (or "cut", or "bulked up") with shitty mex weed is laughable. Anyone who's actually seen more than a few varieties knows that this kind of trickery would be quite obvious to the end-user (heh. end-user, getit?) and would not be taken kindly too. I know that in all my time as a cannabis connoisseur I've never seen somebody "bulk up" their quality product with mex. Maybe things are differnt elsewhere though, and I'm just lucky.

In any case, the mexican importers may be criminals under our current law, but they certainly aren't the international terrorists we're after. They're drug smugglers. If you can call any old criminal a terrorist, then you could start putting any old criminal on trial in military court and totally trample all over constitutional rights. Oh, wait. yeah. nevermind. ;-(

Re:Led Zeppelin sells out

[talks_to_birds]

Led Zeppelin?

Aren't they all dead?

Or is that the Who?

t_t_b