Inner City Beautification
With limits on the numbers of outdoor billboards, inner city buildings
have seen an explosion of advertising on their walls. Ads occupying up to
10,000 square feet can command rental fees of up to $60,000 a month. With
such a profit potential, new buildings are being designed with external
walls already reserved for billboards. To critics who question whether
every building in a city need be covered with ads, Lee Wagman, the CEO of
TrizecHahn Development Corp., had an answer that signaled an important
cultural sea change. Pointing to the $600 million
retail/hotel/entertainment complex his company was building in Los
Angeles, Wagman noted that "Our project would look out of place if it
didnt incorporate commercial messages." Some people just aint got no
aesthetic sense. (WSJ1/10/01)
Coming Out Party
Departing President Clinton, as a final gift to the nation,
created the position of a counterintelligence czar. Besides coordinating
the efforts of countless agencies to defend national secrets, the czar has
the added task of protecting critical secrets for American corporations.
The Wall Street Journal reported intelligence officials were hopeful they
could find someone "having the stature to engage chief executives." But
when corporations are keeping secrets from the public, should the
government be acting as an accomplice? Well, yes. Why? As the Journal
explained, in words WTO protestors should learn by heart, "With the rise
in globalization and industrial espionage, government officials now say
national security and economic security are indistinguishable." To update
the words of Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale, "I regret I have but one
life to give for my country and for Mobil Oil and Boeing and Time Warner
and" (WSJ 1/11/01)
Raising the Bar
The Democratic Party toughened their standards for the position of
chair of the Democratic National Committee. With campaign spending reform
on the top of their minds, they decided they needed someone with
experience in the area and so turned to controversial Clinton fundraiser
Terry McAuliffe, whose difficulties with grand jury investigators after
the 1996 election proved to be a plus. The current chair, Joe Andrew,
defended McAuliffes questionable record as a fundraiser, pointing out that
"He can speak about why we have to have campaign-finance reform from
personal experience, with personal passion about the process" His chief
opponent for the post, former Atlanta Mayor Jackson, apparently lacked
such credentials. Rumor has it the DNC is scouring the South for White
segregationists to head up civil rights posts. (WP 1/14/01)
Two Many Big Words
A lawsuit was filed by the ACLU after a school district in
Anaheim, California, removed ten books from the shelves of Orangeview
Junior High School. The books were a series of biographies of important
gays and lesbians, such as James Baldwin, Oscar Wilde, Marlene Dietrich,
Liberace, John Maynard Keynes and Martina Navratilova. You may all breathe
a sigh of relief, because it turned out the books were not removed because
of their homosexual content. Instead, said school district officials, they
were removed because the reading level was "too high" for their students.
In addition, they worried that children might be harassed if seen reading
such books (not, I believe, because of the high reading level but the
content). Since the library is obviously short of books now, you can help
by sending books that match the districts expectations for junior high
readers. May I suggest Dr. Seuss. (Reuters 12/23/00)
More Newspeak is stockpiled at http://www.scn.org/newspeak