Who knew?, we ask. Who knew?
Bleach – yes, common household bleach – is all-of-a-sudden the “original Green” cleaner.
Green, not as you might imagine, as in “it’s not easy being…” but Green, as in the color of grass which is supposedly a good metaphor for things that are good for the environment.
Bleach. Seriously. Because what the world needs now is more sodium hypochlorite and less aloe. We are so far away from Desert Solitaire and Silent Spring, not to mention Walden.
It may be that it’s us, that in our movement from the light green into the shades of darker green, we are noticing more and more the outright hypocrisy and banality of the latest advertising trends. It seems rather sudden, but recently everything has become 100% natural or organic.
• Tide detergent: all natural.
• Drano: safe for groundwater.
• Ford: didn’t think they had to mention being Green. (NOTE: Ford has been claiming to be the Green car company ever since it accidentally introduced it’s first “hybrid” Pinto in the 70’s (Runs on a combination of fuel and an ignition spark! – A Minor Bump’ll Do You!): frankly, you’re not green if you are the 7th largest corporate air polluter (2002), releasing 9.67 million lbs of toxic air, including some good healthy chromium, formaldehyde and sulfuric acid. Let’s not mention the 54 Superfund toxic waste sites the EPA linked Ford to.
‘Tis a shame to see the environmental movement linked to celebrity names, and now being pandered by Madison Avenue in a classic case of zeitgeist/bandwagon-jumping.
• (We’re Kraft: America’s First Green Food Company.)
• (But then see also, We’re Kellogg’s: America’s First Green Food Company.)
• (But then see also, We’re del Monte: America’s First Green Food Company.)
• (But wait, because there’s, We’re Green Giant: Get it? Greeeeeeennnnn Giant.)
• (And last, as if this hasn’t been enough, We’re Bush: Where America Turns Green for Beans.)
All of these, oh by the way, are very real advertising campaigns. Or at least they will be one day.
In Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang, the good doctor is willing to chain himself to a bulldozer to prevent the building of the bridge across the river (not Kwai) whose name we cannot currently think of (but it’s probably the Colorado as Abbey was so very massively opposed to the Glen Canyon damming for the creation of Lake Powell).
Wouldn’t it be nice to see Gore chain himself to waste drainage pipe until it’s muck is cleaned up, and we mean completely cleaned up not just EPA standard 23% cleaned up?
Wouldn’t it be nice to see Bono move to Africa and live with the starving children instead of taking their pictures from the helicopter and co-op-ing their images to sell what is essentially his own line of merchandise? Well, his and the Gap’s. A portion of the proceeds??? Go to BuyLessCrap.com to see how this can work where it is all of the cotton-pickin’ proceeds that go to their destination (unless of course the Red Cross is involved: then it is considerably less than all, it might even turn out to be practically none equaling zero) instead of to a retail outlet enjoying it’s feel-good (good PR, good bandwagon-jumping) moment in the sun.
It is no secret, we are sure, that peanut butter and jelly are both (or should be) one-hundred percent natural products so it cuts us to the quick to see Kraft (proud owners, oh by the way, of Phillip Morris Tobacco Company, otherwise known as the company that killed the Marlboro Man) proclaim that their ubiquitous Macaroni and Cheese can be not only one hundred percent natural but organic to boot. Really? With that fly fluorescent orange cheese powder by-product they use? Really???? And don’t misunderstand, we do love the occasional of stomach problems that accompany eating a box of the “can be” natural Mac & Cheese. (Okay, no we don’t but we have some for back up purposes in case the lights go out: we can use the cheese by-product powder as an artificial light until we find some candles). (Failing finding a candle, we can always light the cheese by-product powder, as it is most likely flammable considering the all-natural (can be organic) chemical contents).
So, anyway, don’t get us started.
Because while we’re at it, does a spoonful of sugar really make the medicine go down? Huh? Does it? No, no it does not. Gravity makes the medicine go down, the simple force of gravity. Gravity, mind you, unadorned with sugar. Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen for one Ms. Mary Poppins (who is, as we know, practically perfect in practically every way), is what it sounds like. Here’s something else: nannies do not fly, bankers do not cavort and sing, and sweeps do not fly – Santa Claus like – up the cotton-pickin’ chimneys. You most definitely can NOT NOT NOT NOT jump into a chalk picture painted on the sidewalk, and this one, as you can probably tell, is sort of a sticking point with us because we tried. To jump, we mean. Into a chalk picture painted on the sidewalk, as it were. (‘Twere actually a driveway.) Here’s what it got us, here’s where we landed: it – our jump – got us to the driveway/sidewalk, fairly, we might add, flat-footed.
Posh and nonsense, it is.
Balderdash.
Poppycock.
Spit-spot.
As our six-yr-old nephew would say, You want a piece of us?
That’s posh and nonsense, we say, not Posh the Spice Girl (probably making a comeback as the Original Green All-Girl Group). Green before Green was hip, they will say they were.
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