The account of my encounter with Justin Bieber (which appeared last year in this column) did little to tame the smoldering ardor within our younger female readers. Indeed, it seems only to have added fuel to the passionate flames licking the interior of their budding womanhood. Even one of our older male readers (himself a veritable local musical legend) seemed inspired by the story when he finally caught up with it upon its inclusion in the Dutton anthology, Teen Idols: Satan’s Minions, this past March. He has yet to stop pestering me for additional minute details I may have ‘left out,’ and I’ll occasionally catch him leaving the Paras Newsstand with an armful of the latest Bieber teen magazines. I’ve had some nasty little attacks of guilt about the part I may have played in leading him into an ugly living hell right out of Death in Venice. (Truth is best, Gregory, and I think I know someone who can help you. Call me, please, and remember: you are not alone’)
It was not my intention to be a part of this great manipulative media monster that turns the masses into unknowing zombies whose affection and love can be so successfully steered toward what any outsider with taste could instantly brand as worthless crap.
I decided to call this pervasive monster, this arbiter of public taste, this warrior against reason and intelligence.
Popaganda
Ran it by God and He dug it, agreeing with me that under any name it seems to have been working overtime recently.
Popaganda caused millions to eschew much-needed sleep in order to watch, on live television, the nuptials of two foreigners who, along with most of their own circle and many of their countrymen, sincerely believe that the very quality of your blood (and by implication all other bodily liquids and exudations) is inferior to theirs. Even if you can prove (which they most assuredly cannot) that your blood is entirely untainted by any generational inbreeding.
Popaganda is the source of more popular modern delusions than most of us will ever comprehend, creating and packaging idolatry, turning religious zealotry rabid and insane, commoditizing music and the arts, coarsening and lobotimizing our language (abominations such as chillax and Popaganda come to mind) ‘ It is the subtle genius of its vile agenda that renders writers incapable of using the phrases ‘the rest is history’ and ‘tongue and cheek’ without the respective insertion of ‘as they say’ and ‘firmly.’ I’d go on, but I’m becoming bored and I fear I’m not the only one. Just trust me ‘ this stuff really is, as Jennifer Lopez recently said on network television, ‘impor’ent!’
Most (if not all) of us seem to have survived one of Popaganda’s favored clients, Judgment Day, May 21, the End of Times, the Raptor ‘ I mean Rapture, or what I’ll here more conveniently call JD2011.
I was astonished at the various television interviews in the days leading up to May 21, the ones with Family Radio International’s founder ‘Reverend’ Harold Camping. He’s the dweeb who came up with the ‘revelation’ and after turning the matter over to Popaganda, there followed a frightened world brought to his knees (he wished). Straight-faced, the Rev would explain again and again his amazing mathematic decipherings to reporters who hadn’t the slightest interest in challenging his delusions or exposing them as the dripping crap they clearly are. At no point did I hear anyone remind this charlatan that Holy Writ unequivocally states that no one will (or, by inference, can) know the date of the inevitable Judgment Day, which therefore can and will occur only on that one mystical date when absolutely no one alive is expecting it. Period. No asterisk!*
Popaganda’s most unfortunate victims on JD2011 were devout people of faith who bought the whole litter box of Camping’s atrocities, perhaps reasoning that, since the last 3000 or so Popagandized Judgment Days hadn’t exactly panned out, this one was sure to be the real thang, since the chance of somethin’ happenin’ 3001 times in a row just gotta be near nonexistent. Yup, JD2011 was lookin’ better all the time ‘ many of these brain-leeched victims actually liquidated all of their worldy assets, abandoned their every material possession. Lo and behold, these pilgrims are currently learning just how curiously liberating life can be when one isn’t so attached to things, bless their sweet hearts’.
Popaganda has really done a number on political discourse for decades and has now reached the point of hysteria, especially when it comes to most radio talk shows. Our current president cannot so much as yawn without that yawn being accused of attempting to subvert the Constitution of the United States. The yawn that tried to kill a country, the yawn that thumbed its uvula at the American way! If these talk show hosts are real and their rants sincere, then they are, in fact, either clinically insane or the embodiment of Evil on earth. On the other hand, if it’s all just an act for ratings, if they’re insincere and just dig the paycheck and attention, then I wouldn’t hesitate to call them criminally irresponsible and truly dangerous. In either case, I do now command them to Repent! O, kobasanda labahsoya etyu tuyu brute lala etanpetecetera!
I’ll close now (you’re welcome) with an absolutely true incident that just happened to take place as Saturday, May 21 unfolded.
Coincidentally, it was the date of the first OB Beach Ball, a wonderful better-than-a-street-fair festival with great music, contests, fun, booze, etc., which took place from 9am to 9pm all around the area just north of the great pier. I had the honor of being the stage announcer for the day, and I had a blast. The only troubling glitch came in the form of one announcement that I was handed to read by an official, who stressed that the person who had called the message in had sounded legitimately frantic. So now, transcribed from a recording of the surveillance tapes:
This is a very important message for two teenage girls, Cindy and Donna Musson, who are twins. Your parents need you to return home immediately! They beg you to come home right away so that you’ll all be together for the Rapture. They need you home NOW, Cindy and Donna, and they warn you that you’re going to be put on restriction for two weeks if you’re not there within 30 minutes. Cindy and Donna Musson, you must return home NOW!
Let us all join hands now and take a month to pity those sweet twins. And may I, with His help, have a hand in many of their own future raptures. Amen.
* Want to be able to celebrate a lot more New Years Eve parties with no apocalyptic worries? Every day, when you wake up, persuade yourself to the point of True Belief that that day will be Judgment Day. Surely this will prove itself to be the most powerful and effective example of passive resistance in all of history.