The Exaggerator

Incidental #1,477: Some final thoughts before the holidays

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:15:00 GMT

THAT MAY BE PUTTING IT A LITTLE HILARIOUSLY, MIND YOU, especially considering where this will be the last post for 2009 here @ The Exaggerator; in line with an established tradition on my part, Your Correspondent will be taking a break from blogging over the Christmas-New Year's holiday fortnight after this post goes up.

Incidental #1,476: A Message of Importance

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:55:41 GMT

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AND NOW, A MESSAGE OF IMPORTANCE DIRECTED IN PARTICULAR TO SUCH SPECIMENS OF CONSERVATIVE "WINNING OF HEARTS AND MINDS" claiming to represent what you call "Real Americans" who, for the most part, are poor, undereducated, ignorant, socioeconomically-displaced to the point of being deemed unsuitable for worker retraining and easily-influenced, known in the common vernacular as "poor white trash" (which, come to think of it, is what they are), let alone their Honour and Virtue (or what you think passes for it):

If, as you love to claim in your radio and/or TV broadcasts, you sincerely care for the interests of your beloved "Real Americans" who are regular viewers and listeners of your programmes (as the case may be)--many of them small-town/rural and lower working class "white trash," as a matter of record--I would like to pray ask you @ this time:

What justifies your maintaining an arrogant, haughty, Robin Leach-stylee culture and lifestyle such as you forever condemn as "elitist" and "arrogant," not to mention "out of touch with Real America"?
What justifies the five houses you have (@ least two of which have to be vacation houses) as are largely in mothballs for extended times, let alone being rather ostentatious in and of themselves?
What justifies the stable of fuel-inefficient automobiles (SUV's, for the most part) you have as opposed to more proletarian models? Is it, perhaps, your toadyism to the so-called "Wise Use" crowd using same as patsy to excuse the wasteful as one with the Defence of Our Antient and Peculiar Sovereignty and Sovereign Identity?
What justifies the private helicopters and/or executive jet aircraft as are more than likely sitting idle @ some general-aviation airport save for the one or two times a year same are more than likely to be used?
What justifies the first-class airfares you forever insist on being "entitled" to while suggesting that your audience should waste fuel driving around in less-fuel-effieicent automobiles made all the more so by deliberately deferred maintenance?
What justifies the servants, maids, chefs, gardeners, even concubines on your staff when you're probably capable yourselves of doing much the same things you hired them for (never mind their probably being here illicitly or otherwise overstaying their J-2 student visas)?
What justifies the ostentatiously garish to the point of arrogant displays of Savile Row (let alone Brooks Brothers) tailoring, the Rolex watches, the Asprey's or Tiffany's diamond jewellry, the charge accounts @ the likes of high-end retailers like Lord & Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue, Harrods, Tiffany's, Selfridge's, Galeries Lafayette--or, for that matter, the mysterious cartes noire from VISA and/or American Express, and the cachet so associated, all the while expecting your legions of the easily-led to depend all the more on Wally World and charity thrift shops?
What justifies the high-end vacations in Palm Beach, Sedona, Montserrat, Monte Carlo, Cancun, wherever, and your insistence on no less than the most expensive suite available while expecting your working-class droogs to get by on deliberately reduced wages pacified by the crudely jingoistic brand of True Patriot Love in All Thy Sons Command such as you enjoy promoting?
What justifies the offshore bank accounts and investment funds you stash your proceeds away in--"tax reasons," perhaps, or is that too easy a platitude which could unwittingly get you in trouble if what you see as "the wrong channels" got word, all the while scaring your less-sophisto audiences into buying gold "till it hurts" for fear of Major Socioeconomic Collapse in the face of the "New World Order" which you know, and I know, and I know, and you know, to be an Emmanuel Goldstein to keep the "morons and idiots" in line?
What justifies the likelihood of your escaping the Reality which you're only compounding on what you see as your Happy Little Vegemites, so to speak, with debauched excesses of alcohol, narcotic or hallucinogenic drugs, chronic and habitual excesses of potentially wasteful and unnecessary shopping, gambling @ the high-roller tables in Las Vegas, Monte Carlo and Macau (and maybe losing your fortune without warning) and other "anti-social tendencies" you forever rail against to your legions of the ignorant and unaware? Is it, perhaps, your own dysfunctional upbringing and background (including, perhaps, episodes of incest or other forms of sexual abuse)?
What justifies, all in all, your selfish, heartless, arrogant contempt of the very same "Real Americans" you forever insist on representing the "best interests" of, never mind that the policies you represent (and excuse as one with Saving America From Herself) have actually posed clear and present harm, and then some, to those you so dearly cherish (howbeit privately) as "suckers" and "dumb idiots" willing to parrot the bumper-sticker-slogan "talking points" you hash out every weekday, not caring a whit about the Greater Collective Good of the Poor and Marginalised you see as easy prey, even if it means causing serious psychological harm or distress which you'd easily dismiss as "the price of being The Voice and Conscience of Real America"?
And One Thing More: "Have you no sense of Decency, Sir, @ long last? Have you left no sense of Decency?"

As if that weren't enough: As Example and Warning from History about how your kind sees your audience as nothing more than dupes who can be easily-manipulated, I call your attention to some interesting insights into one Norman G. Baker (1882-1958) vis-a-vis his pseudo-medical "institute" for treating cancer "without X-ray or knife" in Muscatine, Iowa, vintage 1930, as noted by Eric S. Juhnke in Quacks and Crusaders: The Fabulous Careers of John Brinkley, Norman Baker, and Harry Hoxsey (University Press of Kansas, 2002, pp. 46-48, op. cit.):

Since Baker lacked a licence to practive medicine himself, he claimed to leave the supervision of treatments to the discretion of his doctors. However, in 1930 the Iowa State Board of Health acquired a series of notes he had written to his staff that suggested otherwise. In addition to chastising doctors for not purchasing gas at his filling station, he instructed them to administer castor oil to all patients, mix powder and liquid formulas according to his guidelines, and peddle new items available in the hospital's pharmacy. "Let's get these going quick as possible," he urged, after receiving a shipment of herb medicine for rheumatism, Hodgkins' disease, dropsy, stomach ulcers, and goiter. "If you have cases in the hospital, let's try them out here." Baker also directed treatments for particular patients. "Put Donald Dericks on the white powder also the No. 109 tea," he wrote. "Take his urine now and in two weeks and four weeks and give me [a] report." Baker ordered his doctors not to dismiss patients who were unable to stay in the hospital "without taking a home treatment of medicines.... This will bring good revenue," he noted, "and help the poor souls."

(The gas station referred to was among several other business enterprises in Muscatine under Baker's umbrella, legendary for offering gas @ prices 1/3 less than the "chain" gas stations--or so it was advertised. Baker also ran a cut-price department store with mail-order service; all promoted, as with the Baker Institute [as the pseudo-hospital was officially known], over radio station KTNT ["Know The Naked Truth"], the affiliated TNT Magazine and the weekly tabloid gazetta Midwest Free Press. Federal Radio Commission action forced KTNT off the air in 1931, citing excessive signal interference with other stations and excessive self-promotion.

(Following prolonged legal action, Baker would attempt to regain past glory by relocating his cancer clinic to Laredo, Texas--and, across the Rio Grande in Nuevo Laredo, his new high-powered radio station, XENT. Still later, he attempted to return to past glory, a la Muscatine, by reopening his "hospital" in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, complete with the same old claims of "Cancers and Tumors Cured Without Surgery, X-Ray or Radium***We Do Not Cut Out Any Organ." By 1940, Mexican broadcasting regulators would force XENT off the air, eventually forcing Baker into obscurity; towards the end, he had designs of reclaiming past radio glory by way of an offshore radio station in "pirate ship" stylee off the Florida coast.)

ALL IN ALL, THEN, I HAVE THIS MUCH TO ASK: What defence do you have for all your arrogance @ the expense of the ignorant and the easily-influenced as make up your Secret Squadron as can be counted on, or so you hope, to Reclaim America From Herself? (And PLEASE, we can do without your usual noblesse oblige platitudes in circumstances such as this.)

(Memo to Readers: You're strongly urged to pass this along through the several social networks you subscribe to, as well as through e-mail circles you may have--but do it responsibly; "spam" will only cause this appeal to backfire and be turned against Your Correspondent, who has limited income and resources for a legal defence.)

"...and that is is a way."

The Exaggerator

Incidental #1,477: Some final thoughts before the holidays

Incidental #1,476: A Message of Importance

Incidental #1,475

Incidental #1,474

Incidental #1,473

Incidental #1,472

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