Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Messaging, old school

It's easy to forget that even in the most grave of world emergencies, naysayers will undermine good sense for profit. From the day when workers had hope and unions had real power, here's a fascinating bit of propaganda directed by Chuck Jones of Warner Bros, with lyrics by Broadway great Yip Harburg, for the UAW-CIO in support of the '44 Roosevelt campaign.



I have to think about the intended audience for this short. It wouldn't likely have been theatre audiences, as theatre bills were still controlled exclusively by the studios and I rather doubt this would qualify as a commercial draw. I'm guessing it would have been shown in union halls to build grassroots campaign strength.

11 comments:

Zig E. said...

Very cool ! Got to love the outhouses for housing. oops - I'd better not give the Regressives any ideas.

Steven Ayres said...

It appears that this year they've already had that idea.

Zig E. said...

Well I know it's not on point but here's my latest post to be " disappeared ". I was having a little light hearted banter with Rev. Wanted him to bring back from Cuba a 55 Chevy Nomad for me. He said " How about a Lada ". So here's what got censored - " Well I know it would fit in your pocket better but ..Noooo. How about a cigar. I hear that there rolled on the thighs of virgins, but that's probably just PR. " So I guessing that the word "virgin" is to close to that word "vagina" which the conservatives recently have found objectionable. Also on that same page there are numerous posts from a particular right wing bigot that got into a back and forth with another poster. The other poster really wasn't out of line but a "moderator" stepped in and told them to "get out of the pool", a nice way of telling them to cool it. The very next post was from the - looking for a word I can use - but it seems like another example of bias. Apparently some of us get treated much differently than others depending on your your politics. One person gets censored for using a simple word while another is allowed to post more hate and belligerence than I can believe.

Steven Ayres said...

I'd like to hear about this "moderator" you mention -- can you provide more detail? Who, what, when, how?

Zig E. said...

Looks like you'll be hearing a bit from me as it continues today. That same poster today can call someone " lazy, stupid, drug addicted, conniving ". If I was to use even one of those terms I'd be censored. I have REPEATEDLY been censored for using the term " ignorant " even when I qualified it by saying ignorant as in a lack of knowledge. I have even been censored for using the word "hillbilly ". I'm beginning to think that either I'm being singled out or this paper is owned by Fox. Something needs to be done. Maybe a meeting with the editor is in order. And yes I've tried contacting him with my concerns. No response, but considering, I'm not surprised. I'm about ready to start a picket line in front of the Courier's office. Wonder if they'd even put that in the paper.

Zig E. said...

Just saw your question. Look on the comments. " Site administrators note - Ok children, out of the pool, time to behave." I take that as a moderator. This is all on the Obamacare letter.

Steven Ayres said...

There's certainly no provision of the Courier comments policy against biased speech. There is one against personal attacks that has been only sporadically and cryptically enforced, in my experience usually related to comments attacking the paper or the writer rather than another commenter, and one against unspecified words that the editors find objectionable, which is usually enforced with editing rather than disappearing.

The "out of the pool" admonition sounds like Tim, and I have to say that as a moderating approach it's awfully weak and unspecific. I notice it was attached to one of Lyle's comments, and we should take him to be the primary target. But his subsequent comments do not appear to be edited.

Keep posting here comments that don't appear on dcourier, so we can watch for patterns. (Infrequent commenters should be aware that it takes varying amounts of time for them to publish a given comment and they usually come in batches.)

Steven Ayres said...

By the way, from the way his rhetoric is spinning up I tend to think that Lyle will burn out rather quickly and retire from the comments. He's one of those who's best ignored.

Zig E. said...

Thanks again Steven ! I appreciate the form your providing.

Zig E. said...

And that was supposed to be " forum". My bad.

Steven Ayres said...

I figured.