Like it says here, the Kellogg's people are going to stop targeting very young children to buy cereals loaded with sugar and/or sodium. What the new policy means is a bit undefined but it looks like things like Froot Loops and Apple Jacks will either be reformulated or at the very least will lose their cartoony mascots. Or something. If they're doing it because they fear lawsuits relating to making children obese, they may be doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
Yeah, a lot of us are too fat and it doesn't help if you start life that way. But I'd hate for a generation of kids to think that the government is sufficiently monitoring all this and getting harmful foods off the shelves. I used to have a line that I quoted every time I heard nonsense on my television: "Well, if they say it on television, it must be true." Needless to add, I said this a lot. I'd hate to think kids would be saying — and believing it — that if they sell it in the stores and advertise it, it can't be bad for you.
My friend Sergio is on his way over here with Groo pages. He's been on his way over here with Groo pages for at least an hour longer than it usually takes. A few minutes ago, he called me on his cell phone to say he was stuck on a freeway where traffic was literally not moving and he had no idea why. So I decided to hop over to a website that monitors traffic and accident reports in real time and see what I could tell him.
The above is a screen grab of what I found. Sergio is stuck in traffic because there are ducks on the freeway. In fact, as any fool can plainly see, there's a duck and ducklings.
Isn't the Internet wonderful? If Sergio showed up and said, "Sorry I'm late...there was a duck with ducklings on the freeway," I'd never have believed him.
Author-historian Michael Barrier recently published — that is to say, his publisher recently published — an exhaustive biography of Walt Disney entitled The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. I have a copy but haven't yet had the time to do more than flip through it, just as I've only had time to read a few sections of Neal Gabler's recently-issued Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. So that's the answer to those of you who've written me to ask which of the two you should buy and/or believe. You'll have to wait 'til I find time to thoroughly digest them both...which at my current rate should be about the time they unfreeze Walt. And no, neither book is foolish enough to believe the old myth about Walt being frozen. If I had to pick one based on authors' rep and the seriousness with which they approached their investigations, I'd go with Barrier.
Obviously, the books cover the factual recital of Disney's life pretty much the same way but differ in a number of accounts. One intriguing one is the story of Walt receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Lyndon Johnson on September 14, 1964, back when the Presidential Medal of Freedom meant something — i.e., back before Bush gave one to George Tenet. The story as told by Gabler, Richard Schickel (in his seriously flawed but interesting book, The Disney Version) and others is that Disney insisted on wearing a Goldwater button on his lapel to tweak or otherwise rattle L.B.J. As he's explaining partway down his weblog page at the moment, Barrier doesn't think it happened.
I don't, either. I mean, it's possible...but I've heard so many spurious Tales of Walt that it's generally necessary to ratchet up my already-formidable skepticism whenever he's involved. Even knowing that Disney was a staunch Republican and that he presumably voted for Goldwater, this one sure sounds bogus. First off, there's a long history of people — including many less gracious than Walt is said to have been — swallowing their personal dislike of a president and accepting such awards without insulting the bestower. One also does not want to despoil a moment meant to honor one, if you can follow that sentence.
It not only would have been rude, it would have been foolish...and few ever applied either of those descriptions to Walt Disney. At the time the ceremony took place, Johnson had a solid double-digit lead on Goldwater and newspapers were wondering if the latter would even carry his home state. Disney, who had business interests all across the nation and abroad, knew then and there it would be four more years of L.B.J. in the White House. Why antagonize someone that powerful for a private insult? Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?
Which of course doesn't mean it didn't happen. I'd just like to see a photo that shows this alleged Goldwater button before I believe it. Even then, I'd tend to think it had to be a clumsy joke on Walt's part...and a dangerous one. Throughout the Vietnam War, Johnson refused to mine Haiphong Harbor. A button like that might have caused him to float bombs in the waters of Jungleland.
Back in this item, I linked you to a great 1964 Coca-Cola commercial with a musical performance by one of my favorite groups of that era, the Limeliters. A lot of you liked that commercial, too...so here's another one, probably from the following year. This doesn't have as much of the Limeliters as the other one. In fact, I'm not 100% certain this isn't some other group imitating the Limeliters. But even if it is, it's a good little spot...
June 15, 2007
