Just running through the referrals to this humble little blog, and I found that somebody got here by googling “”smokey hollow”+sausage”. This blog came up as number four out of fifty, and what **I** had to say about Smokey Hollow sausage wasn’t flattering. Of course, I live in a place where sausage is art…
I can find about a half dozen places to buy GREAT sausage within a half-hour drive…
Louisiana: Setting the standards for crooked politicians since 1803…
In view of recent amateurish activities by the governor of New Jersey in response to being caught at scandal, I tender this information: We were “blessed” to have Edwin Edwards as governor of this state for more terms than I want to think about. The law finally caught up to him, but AFTER he was out of office.
A couple of sayings from him:
This one on a national network news show:
“It wasn’t illegal for me to TAKE the money, it was illegal for them to give it to me.”
And this one during an interview:
“The only thing that could get me thrown out of office is to be caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl.”
And remember, this is the guy who was in a run-off for the governorship of the state against David Duke, ackowledged white supremist, which brought out THIS memorable campaign slogan:
“Vote for the crook. It’s important!”
After all, this IS Louisiana. We are never surprised when our politicians turn out to be cheesy right up front…
The latest “Fred on Everything” column is one of Fred’s better ones. Fred talks about television. Here’s a telling excerpt:
If you want to change the behavior of an audience or a country, if you want to replace their deeply held values with your own, you don’t tell them what to do or what to believe. They might resist. We do not like getting orders. No, you show the things being done—over and over and over. In the beginning you only imply the desired behavior or point of view, leave it in the background so that it is hardly noticed. Over and over and over you imply it. Gradually you make it more explicit. It takes years, but people come to accept whatever they see, and then to imitate it.
Time was, people who wished to pursue a lifestyle insulated from that practiced in Holywood or New York, they could go to small town. Stories of naive “country bumpkins” abounded. But you could find a wholesome place to raise a family.
Not any more. We have the universal means to homogenize the culture: TV. No longer is there a tangible delay between the time a fad hits Los Angeles and the time it finds itself replicated in middle America, because television insures that as soon as Hollywood thinks it’s what they want to push, they push it into the living rooms of darned near every household in America.
This wouldn’t be a bad thing if Big Media had any sort of sense of morality or patriotism, but their values are not traditional wholesome values. Don’t even consider “alternate” lifestyles. Just look where they’ve pushed heterosexuality: Britney Spears marketed HARD to pre-teen girls, and look at the example she is setting. Don’t think it’s working? Go park yourself in any mall on a Saturday afternoon and look at all the little Britney lookalikes.
IF TV WASN’T SO GOOD AT SELLING, DO YOU THINK THAT ADVERTISERS WOULD PAY WHAT THEY DO FOR PRIME TIME SPOTS?
And, good folks, it’s not about selling soap and beer, it’s selling our culture.
( and in addition to Fred’s column, I want to tip the ol’ hat to Obnoxious Droppings, who beat me to the post…)