Posts Tagged ‘woke’

Tide is our woke laundry detergent

Posted: September 17, 2023 by John Ruberry in business, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

After years of calling out the outrages and absurdities of political correctness and its successor, wokeness, I still manage to be regularly shocked. Yesterday I stumbled across a box while grocery shopping that boasted, “Ultra concentrated Tide–turn to cold to use 90 percent less energy***.”

Yes, even laundry detergent has gone woke. 

Okay, who wants to save money?

Pretty much everyone. 

However, when you look at the triple asterisks–you mean one isn’t enough?–you learn about the cold water claim, according to Tide, it occurs “on average when switching from hot to cold water.”

What if you mostly use warm water laundry washes?

Tide’s propagandistic green marketing push goes back to 2021. The ultimate goal of Tide, which is owned by Proctor & Gamble, is to “save the planet.”

Of course, it is.

When Mrs. Marathon Pundit and I purchase detergent, we look for fair prices, which means we don’t buy overpriced Tide, but more importantly, we want soap that cleans our clothes without damaging them. 

That’s all. We are modest folks.

The Marathon Pundit household is confident that the fate of Earth is not connected to our choice of laundry detergent.

As for Tide, it has a sustainability page on its website, where among other things, Tide claims people washing their clothes can “get great results, no matter the water temperature. Tide is specially designed to give you the best clean in every wash, even in cold water. Tide even cleans better in cold water than the bargain brand does in warm.”

Sorry I don’t believe it.

I have reasons to be skeptical of overreaching claims, as I am old enough to remember being told that carbon emissions would lead to a new ice age. That is, until I was lectured by my “betters” that carbon emissions would lead to global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps, as soon as the last decade. Al Gore predicted that last one. Yes, he did–don’t believe the lying fact-checkers.

Not only am I skeptical of leftist claims, but I am also doubly so of marketers’ claims.

As a liberated 21st century male, I do a lot of our family’s laundry. Unless a fabric is super-delicate, most of what I wash is–sorry Tide–done in warm water. Our clothes come out cleaner and there is no soap residue, as is usually the case when, against my better judgement, I wash clothes in cold. With whites I use the hot water cycle.

But Tide tells us cold water is better.

Hogwash.

Oh, my guess is that the marketing geniuses with Tide are out-of-touch rich slobs who have hired help handling their laundry chores.

If you are squeamish, you may want to skip the next three paragraphs.

I’m a runner and I run about 40 miles a week. Athletes’ foot and jock itch, usually caused by the ringworm fungus, is something I have to cope with every summer. The best way to eliminate this pernicious fungus is to wash infected garments in hot water. You hear that, Tide? Color garments might get damaged by hot water, yes, but apple cider vinegar soaking for infected color garments is great way to kill fungus.

Let’s stick with white socks. And if you had any doubts, now you know why athletes wear white socks.

Not only is cooler water, both cold and warm, ineffective in killing fungus, washing in such temperatures runs the risk of spreading the fungus to other garments. Oh, if you have a significant other who you share a bed with and you are infected with a fungus skin rash, and then your partner pulls a sheet from you as you are sleeping, guess who might acquire that rash? Even after your bedsheets go through a full cycle of a cold or warm water wash.

Oh, I’ve unknowingly put on infected clothes months after a failed wash, and guess what happened?

Let’s just say fungi are survivors.

Once again, Tide, I buy laundry detergent to clean our clothes. My way. Without wokeness, haughtiness, and without soap stains and the spread of fungus.

Back to bed sheets: Hot water washes, not cold or warm, kill bed bugs.

And finally, I don’t believe Tide’s claim that using cold water while washing clothes and bed sheets consumes “90 percent less energy.” I’ve been lied to way too many times.

Use Tide detergent. Save the planet. Get bitten by bed bugs. Spread fungal infections.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Disney has another flop on its hands

Posted: July 30, 2023 by John Ruberry in business, entertainment, media, News/opinion
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By John Ruberry

“There it is, dear,” I whispered to Mrs. Marathon Pundit last Sunday during the seemingly endless parade of movie trailers as we awaited Oppenheimer (great film, by the way), at AMC Village Crossing in Skokie, Illinois last Sunday, “that is Disney’s next flop.” 

“That” was Haunted Mansion, which is yet another movie based on a Disney theme park attraction. Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and Tokyo Disneyland all have Haunted Mansions. The last time I was visited Disney World, Little Marathon Pundit and I went on the Haunted Mansion ride, way back in 2001, neither of us were impressed. 

And do you know what? Barring an unexpected flocking to the Haunted Mansion movie turnstiles, I have already been proven right about the film, which stars LaKeith Stanfield Tiffany Haddish, and Owen Wilson, and it includes appearances by Jamie Lee Curtis and Danny DeVito.

Disclosure: Other than the below trailer, I haven’t seen Haunted Mansion, nor the 2003 Disney film, The Haunted Mansion, which starred Eddie Murphy. Nor do I ever intend to see either. However, I might take a look at Muppets Haunted Mansion, a Disney Halloween television special which first aired in 2021.

You know when a movie is in trouble when a two-minute-long trailer can’t make it look appealing.

The Murphy vehicle made money, but it was critically panned. The new Haunted Mansion is currently receiving a 41 percent Tomatometer at Rotten Tomatoes. 

Here is the opening sentence of Manohla Dargis’ New York Times review: “There is a mansion, it is haunted, boo, blah, the end.”

Disney’s woke remake of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, which featured an African American Ariel, at best will make a modest profit for the studio. Other recent House of Mouse family-oriented flops include Elemental, Strange World, and Lightyear. The latter includes a same-sex kissing scene.

Back to the new Haunted Mansion: Its director, Justin Simien, who is African American makes note of the setting of the movie, New Orleans. “I felt it was really important for the lead to be Black, because this is set in New Orleans and it’s an 85% Black town,” Simien told Yahoo Entertainment. Adding, “I wanted to make [the movie] as Black as I can because that’s New Orleans.” Oh, while New Orleans has been a majority African American town for decades, it is currently has roughly a sixty-percent Black population. 

Okay, Simien and Disney can make any kind of movie it wants. But instead of focusing on a movie that is “as Black as I can,” why not, instead produce a movie with a compelling storyline and great performances from actors, regardless of their race? While it’s impossible for any entertainment endeavor to please everyone, even with family-oriented projects, why not try to attract as many people as possible?

In defense of New Orleans, it is widely considered to be the most haunted city in America–again, regardless of race, so it is a good choice for the setting of Haunted Mansion.

Does Disney want to keep making bombs? It appears that it does.

Next year, in yet another remake, a live action version of Snow White will hit theaters. In the Grimm Brothers tale, the authors make it clear that Snow White had “skin white as snow, lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony.” A Hispanic woman will play the lead in the 2024 film. As for her seven dwarves, they’ve been recast with a multi-racial group of six men of average height–with just one dwarf to aid her in her struggles, which presumably will include battling the patriarchy, represented by the Huntsman, and maybe every once in a while, the Evil Queen. And in the new Snow White, will we learn why the Queen turned evil? I’m predicting the patriarchy will be at fault. Oh, don’t forget that Huntsman.

Walt Disney had many gifts, and a crucial one that made his studio a success is that he knew time-tested stories were also solid material for movies, which is why Walt made animated versions of classic fairy tales, including Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and of course, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. And Walt didn’t rehash the same movies.

Contemporary Disney movies are diverse in casting, but not diverse in regard to imagination.

What’s next, besides a new Snow White, for Disney’s movie wing?

Back to Dargis’ New York Times review:

She looked back to NY Times critic Elvis Mitchell’s rundown of the Murphy Haunted Mansion, where he wrote that it was “only a matter of time before Parking Lot: The Movie and People-Mover: The Motion Picture” would hit the local cineplex. Well, that hasn’t happened. Yet.

On the other hand, there are over 150 Grimm Brothers tales, most of which haven’t been made into feature films.

Oh, one more idiotic thing about the new Haunted Mansion. Why was it released in July, instead of October? You know, when Halloween is? I know what stupid looks like–it has big mouse ears.

Meanwhile, the Sound of Freedom, made with a modest budget, is a financial success.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Disney’s Fahrenheit 2023

Posted: June 11, 2023 by John Ruberry in business, entertainment, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Ray Bradbury in a way predicted Disney’s latest outrageous move.

Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953, is a dystopian novel that is overshadowed by two other great 20th century works about an unpleasant future, Brave New World and 1984. Fahrenheit 451’s lead character is Guy Montag, a fireman, only in Bradbury’s world, buildings are fireproof; Montag and other firemen are dispatched to homes to burn books. Nearly of them. Only comic books are permitted in that unhappy future. 

Michiko Kakutani, in a New York Times career appraisal written on the day after Bradbury’s death in 2012, remarked that Fahrenheit 451 “is at once a parable about McCarthyism and Stalinism, and a kind of fable about the perils of political correctness and the dangers of television and other technology.” Yep, Kakutani said “political correctness,” the term for “woke” from that not-too-distant time.  In a 1994 interview Bradbury, in very blunt language even for the 1990s, attacked that PC culture while discussing Fahrenheit 451. “Political correctness is the real enemy these days,” he said. “The black groups want to control our thinking and you can’t say certain things. The homosexual groups don’t want you to criticize them. It’s thought control and freedom of speech control.”

In a memorable passage from Fahrenheit 451, Montag’s boss explained–without government involvement mind you–how books became toxic. 

The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic books survive. And the three-dimensional sex-magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals. 

Last week, Hollwood Elsewhere noticed the omission of the “N-word” from the Gene Hackman classic police thriller The French Connection from the Criterion Channel streaming service. The use of the racial slur helps define Hackman’s character, Popeye Doyle, as a great cop but a flawed man. 

Not as controversially, Doyle regularly refers to two French criminals as “Frog 1” and “Frog 2.” Those ethnic putdowns remain in the film. So does the iconic scene of Hackman gunning down Frog 2 on a set of stairs. For now, at least. 

It’s widely believed that Disney, which owns the rights to The French Connection, is behind the stealth editing. To use Bradbury’s words, “It didn’t come from the Government down.”

Disney of course has gone full-blown woke in recent years, the outrage prior to this one, from last month, involved a mustachioed man wearing a dress and eye shadow, a fairy godmother’s apprentice named Nick, greeting guests, including children, at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique at Disneyland. Before that, Disney’s prior woke atrocity there was an anti-white people song performed in the Disney+ children’s series, The Proud Family.

Disney’s theme parks are supposed to be “the happiest place on earth.” That’s it? Humans are only about happiness?

Back to Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451:

You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, what do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right?

We won’t be happy, I believe, as dumbed down dolts.

The entertainment industry, a fortress of the left, constantly reminds us, especially during award ceremonies, that they are the vanguard for free expression. Sure, a censoring of the “N” word doesn’t seem like a noble hill to die on but remember the dystopian world of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The slippery slope began in order to placate a few people who were offended.

Why stop with the “N” word? What about the French Connection’s Frog 1 and Frog 2? Smoking in movies? And what Donald Trump’s cameo in Home Alone 2?

Viewers might get triggered.

Don’t laugh about that Trump scene. The star of Home Alone 2, Macaulay Culkin. wants the Trump bit cut. And he’s not alone.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Defining Woke: The Four Stages of Woke: Delusional, Crazy Batshit Crazy, Fully Woke

Posted: June 5, 2023 by datechguy in culture
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The left has been insisting we define ” Woke” lately. It’s actually very easy and I shall do so here using my favorite example within.

Woke comes in four stages:

Stage 1: Delusional:

Mr. Shellhammer: But… but maybe he’s only a little crazy like painters or composers or… or some of those men in Washington.

Miracle on 34th street 1947

The first stage of woke is delusional. In this respect “delusional” is defined as believing something that is blatantly false.

This is the most common stage and the one where you can function in society normally. If one is deep into this state the delusional person may act on this delusion but only in their private life. It’s worth noting that most delusional people aren’t woke, but ALL woke people are delusional.

Example: If you believe you’re the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, you’re delusional.

Footnote: At this stage except in casual conversation it’s nobody’s damn business and unless brought up in conversation they should be left alone to think what they want. That’s freedom.

Stage 2: Crazy

Babe Heffrom: Crazy Joe McCulsky

Wild Bill Guarnere: What?

Babe Heffrom: This guy who used to hang at the front of Delancy’s you know and just stare at people.

Band of Brothers Bastonge 2001

The 2nd stage of woke is crazy. In this respect “crazy” is defined as acting on this delusion in your public and personal life to be noticed. This person can function in society to a degree but will always attract looks and stares. It is also the stage where their employment options might be limited as they can be at best disruptive and at worst destructive in the wrong job, particularly if such a job involves interaction with the public or one that requires decision making that effects others.

This can also be the most complicated point. Not only do you see people doing this to themselves but if this involves a group of people there are also those who might go into this stage to fit in. If this involves someone you love or care about this is the place to intervene to try and shake the delusion before it becomes dangerous, but if the person declines, the default position must be to respect their right to make bad decisions for themselves.

Again not all people who are crazy are “woke” but ALL woke people are crazy.

Example: If you believe you’re Napoleon Bonaparte, and then dress like Napoleon, speak like Napoleon and or get your self surgically altered to be Napoleon you’re crazy.

Footnote: This is the point of greatest danger to society in the sense that there are those who will go along or even affirm this person’s crazy delusion thinking they are being “kind” or “tolerant” or loving. What you are actually doing is at best being indifferent and at worst cowardly because you are enabling someone’s self destruction either because you don’t care or don’t want to get involved.

Stage 3: Batshit Crazy

The Joker: As I was saying since every fish in Gotham now bears my famous and frankly fabulous face I should get a profit from every fish product sold. Let’s say a nickel per fish sandwich, fifty cents for sardines. Millions of dollars a day to finance my happily hedonistic lifestyle. So which of your copyright forms do I fill out first? You may speak now.

G Guy Francis: No one can copywrite fish, they’re a natural resource.

The Joker: But they share my unique face. Colonel what’s his name has chickens and they don’t even have mustaches!

G Guy Francis: I can’t help it, it’s the law.

The Joker: Oh trying to cheat the Joker are you? We’ll see who has the last laugh. You have until midnight to change your mind Francis or you’ll be the poorest fish of all

Batman the Animated Series The Laughing fish 1993 adapted from Detective Comics 475 Feb 1978

The 3rd stage of woke is batshit crazy. In this respect “batshit crazy” is defined as demanding that others not just tolerate your crazy delusion but acknowledge it as fact rather than delusion. At this stage the person will use everything from, intimidation to violence to force you to acknowledge a reality that isn’t true. This can be the most dangerous of all the stages in the sense that people who do not actually believe the batshit crazy person’s delusion might decide said person can be manipulated and their batshit crazy delusion used and weaponized against their foes for the sake of power and wealth. There will also be a fair amount of joiners who see this manipulation as a way of personal advancement or will be too afraid to speak out. Such batshit crazy people can only function in society within the woke bubble and will do all they can to create and expand the woke bubble to preserve their delusion.

Example: If you believe you’re Napoleon, and then dress like Napoleon, speak like Napoleon and or get your self surgically altered to be Napoleon and demand that people acknowledge you publicly as Napoleon Bonaparte you’re batshit crazy.

Footnote: Under no circumstances should the person at the batshit crazy stage of woke be affirmed! Not only is it an offence against truth but you will shortly discover that simple affirmation is never enough. If this is not stopped and defeated here then it invariably goes to the final stage

Stage 4: Fully Woke

Jesus Christ: “I have told you this so that you may not fall away. They will expel you from the synagogues; in fact, the hour is coming when everyone who kills you will think he is offering worship to God. They will do this because they have not known either the Father or me.

John 16:1-3

The 4th stage of woke is fully woke. In this respect “fully woke” is defined as using the full power of an institution, the law and the state to not only affirm their batshit crazy delusion as fact but to crush anyone who refuses to do so or publicly calls out their batshit crazy delusion for what it is and encourages others to have the courage to do so. The Batshit Crazy woke person can’t get to this stage without allies or acolytes or immense personal wealth. And because their allies are gaining wealth power and prestige from this batshit crazy delusion there is no limit to the steps they will take to silence you once this state is reached. They will destroy you economically, socially or even physically and do it while proclaiming how virtuous they are being in doing so. They will further demonize any bit of society, an institution, a city, a state, that does not go along with the Woke Batshit crazy delusion because the greatest threat to them at this stage is actual reality. Furthermore if you are a member of the fully woke society you will find that any deviation from the Fully woke batshit crazy delusion, however slight, will cause you to be expelled and considered a non-person.

Example: If you believe you’re Napoleon Bonaparte, and then dress like Napoleon, speak like Napoleon and or get your self surgically altered to be Napoleon and demand that people acknowledge you publicly as Napoleon Bonaparte and use the power of the state and the law to punish and/or oppress any who refuse to shout: Vive L’Empereur!  when you walk by, you’re fully woke.

Footnote: The fully woke person can’t be reasoned with, can’t be debated, they can only be defeated and when defeated must be defeated utterly

Addendum: On very rare occasions a person hitting the fully woke stage or even the Batshit Crazy stage might find themselves shocked into reality. These persons are the greatest threat to the Fully woke and are hated by them even more than those who fought them from the start.

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