hey hey now we're the monkees..

There is some strange evil lurking in the new corporate advertisements on TV (and at most multiplex theaters near you). Consider these three: the "it" of Ebay, the "go yellow" GM, and the Chevy on every mountaintop playing the Olympic theme on their horns. I'll start with that last one.

We have a visual portrait of the great beauty of nature, vast mountainscapes, water moving, fields of virgin snow, interrupted by a Chevy parked on top of this or that promintory. Now picture the Chevy/GM board of directors watching the presentation by the ad agency as they present this piece. Laughing they fully understand the implications of the not-so-subtle messages. The US National Park Service and Department of Interior is currently considering proposals for allowing more, and greater (into what was thought to be protected wildernesses) access to our nation's national parks by vehicles. Chevy wants us to believe that their product best represents this access. They also want us to believe that fuel guzzling SUV's and other trucks are just what we need to enjoy the opportunities of nature. Afterall, if citizens of the US don't immediately drive into these areas, they won't be able to fully experience the remaining snowfields and glaciers that are receding at the greatest rate known in 600,000 years. And of course we never are expected to walk or hike, just drive to these peaks, thus we need to build more roads and vehicle access. That requires more trucks to haul the materials; a GM product promotion hidden in a GM product promotion??

There are so many things wrong with the GM corn campaign that it is only being snarky to suggest that saying the "GM corn campaign" says more that we ever should possibly know. But is it too much to ask that an automobile company promoting ArcherDanielMidlands products in order to keep selling vehicles that will never be efficient in use of fuel, might consider the ramifications of this idiocy. Or is it really the link to ExxonMobil and thus BP the major refiner of fuel ethanols from ADM corn syrup products derived from Monsanto GE(gmo) corn that is polluting the planet, that sets this up. Or maybe the Conoco/Phillips refineries with Dow that are linked in the need to produce more corn and thus sell more chemical fertilizers and herbicides and pesticides all based on fossil fuels? But that isn't even the piece that bothers me the most. No, what i immediately question is the intentional focus on corn and not on hemp as the alternative fuel source of the future. Hemp is a hugely efficient plant, able to grow in a greater diversity of climatic zones (and thus able to be successful quickly in global climate changing environs) with minimal additional resources including: less water, less fertilizers, less pesticides, and zero herbicides (it is a weed after all). Monsanto and Dow ended the use of hemp in the US back in the 30's by using their enhanced economic clout (they increased their assets during the depression) to promote nylon at the expense of a weed that grew everywhere. We have that continued war on some plants on exhibit in this latest nefarious advertising campaign.

The very notion that eBay has to advertise at all seems pretty nuts to me. What is it that they do? Oh yeah, provide a service that essentially is open access to some servers upon which some priority software runs. They own some vehicles, hire monitors for online activities, and collect a percentage from every transaction. Thus the sole and only purpose of advertising at this point is to expend corporate income to reduce their net pre-taxable income to thus increase their post-tax profits. If you don't get the scam, just recognize the elements within it for that they are. EBay wants you to acknowledge that they now own "it" as their corporate trademarked message. Only the most insidious of consumer capitalists would argue that controlling the semiotic "it" is good for business. Do you get it?? Or am i violating eBay's copyright? What is it? Well actually it is nothing except an idea and a really stupid Monkees song. And that is the point, that is it. Selling the idea of eBay to people who remember the monkees, and who can connect a jingle in their head to the word "it" to remember to buy and sell, or simply consume material products that serve no purpose other than to provide an increasingly smaller number of people with more money than they will ever use or need.