This ad popped up on my screen today, inviting me - if I wanted a free new XBOX - to punch President Bush in the face against the background of the American flag. In this simple game I needed to bruise the war-time American president twice and make his mouth bleed. The third punch sent Bush on the floor and I was redirected to onlinerewardcenter.com that offered me to fill out a sweepstakes questionnaire.

Such marketing strategy made me wonder: do they mean to sell XBOX via Bush-bashing, or to sell Bush-bashing via XBOX? Do all XBOX players hate Bush? Do all Bush-haters play XBOX? Maybe they should just switch to promoting The People's Cube instead. This tasteless and poorly executed ad was produced by a marketing firm Casale Media Inc. located at 74 Wingold Ave. Toronto, ON M6B 1P5 Canada, Tel. 1-888-227-2539. Their sleek website promises brand advertisers "specialized solutions for brand-building campaigns, where the focus is on ad impressions, brand association, and precise demographics."

If these marketers think that most Americans would like to punch their president, they must either believe that Bush had not been popularly elected, or they let their hatred of American President trump common sense and business instincts. In either case their minds seem to be stuck in a fantasy world and I wouldn't hire them to promote my John Kerry T-Shirts seven months after the election. But I would definitely recommend them for a position at a Propaganda Directorate of the Central Party Committee. Oh well, they are only Canadians.


But Online Reward Center that commissioned and paid for this ad is an American company based at 13900 Jog Road, Suite 203-251, Delray Beach, Florida 33446, Tel. (561) 674-9700. Their executives must have reviewed the ad at some sort of a round table we often see in the movies, and approved its "brand-building" strategy with the "focus on brand association" (XBOX and Bush-bashing), and "precise demographics" (American teenagers). Did they all agree that alienating the majority of potential customers (50.7% of Americans voted for Bush) was a sound marketing strategy? Or is the sweepstakes business only a cover for a seditious operation by the Propaganda Directorate, to plant seeds of anti-Americanism in teens who would do just about anything for a free XBOX 360™?

A few questions of a more general nature:

• What is the meaning of Free Speech?
  
• Are Americans doing enough to use the First Amendment rights to eliminate themselves? (We urge you to click here to find out what the meaning of Free Speech really is).
  
• Is Marx right in his assertion that under capitalism profit rules? That capitalists are immune to any considerations besides profit? That there is no crime capital will shy away from if promised enough profit?

This ad proves Marx wrong. Just like politically correct Hollywood movies prove Marx wrong. Just like American media corporations that would rather breach their duty to shareholders and lose viewers than give up their leftist agenda. Just like millions spent by businesses nation-wide on diversity programs and sensitivity training. They all prove Marx wrong. It is only logical to ask then, why are the Leftists still so determined to debase, defame, and destroy capitalism if their own behavior negates their very first premise? But one can hardly expect rationality from spoiled brats who don't care about the consequences as long as they can have their tantrum.

Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft Corporation that makes XBOX, could not be reached for comment.

Microsoft Corporation is based at One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA, 98052-6399, Tel. 1-800-642-7676.

Please take no offense from an old fogey like myself (Mid-forties) who has no need for an XBOX (hell, the Cube is enough, who needs an XBOX?) but my work experience with Gen-Xers and Slackers has proven time and time again that these kids are hopeless pasty faced losers who have nothing better to do than to spend their money and time on crap like this. Some of them are in management! Addicted like smack addicts, they stay up until three in the morning playing their games and wonder why they can't focus come 8AM. All are core liberals and they don't know why. They hate George Bush but can't explain the reason other than the rote mantras that they learned from MTV, their High School teachers, and college professors. Real life escapes them and they do it on purpose. Total chickenshits, they'd never serve their country ( I know, that's a generalization and there are brave men & women overseas who play XBOX and are fighting to preserve ours and others freedom) but blasting aliens on the video screen makes them feel heroic. Most still live at home and some are in their 30's. After serving in the Army, playing sports in college, and enjoying hunting and fishing, I tell these punks "It's better to be a has-been than a never-was, why would I want to play this on a video screen when I've done it in real life?"
XBOX is Warren Beatty's mind control machine.
Give me Pinball or Give Me Death!

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS? Is this a test Dear Comrade? Are we not on the same page anymore?

Resolved at the main Party meetings: Bush is an enemy of the Party! As such, all methods of denigration and wishings of evil are legitimate! As such, we must treat him as we would treat the most disgusting syphillitic leper at our picnic table. This is a GIVEN! We must work for the humane treatment of revolutionaries who merely behead in the name of the Party, and obtain soft tissues and pillows, or better yet, freedom, for our inmates who have murdered merely because the system has removed them from their rightful place within the collective.

I will explain this XBOX ad for you, dear former colleague. Once one submits to the Party, one's motivations become the Party's motivations. Profits are no longer the goal. The XBOX is a weapon to be used against UberCapitalist McBushyChimpHitler. Nothing more. Microsoft, Casale Media and Online Reward Center are merely outposts in the overall Party Plan, and should be recognized as such.

I hereby declare your writings anathema and demand to know what boll weevil entered your frontal lobe to produce such nonesense.

I truly hope this is a test.

O.K., so I guess you wanna end our protective satire and allow our wounds to collectively bleed. So be it.

You are correct. Marx was absolutely wrong about capitalism, but why is that a surprise? If you ask a priest about marriage or sex, do you expect him to be right? If you ask a homosexual to judge a wet t-shirt contest, do you expect to see the righteous winner? If you ask a leper to play the piano, do you not expect to see some "flying fingers?"

Capitalism (the free market) merely means self-actualization is allowed with profit as a potential motive. The fact that profit ends up the main motive in most cases is a result of the fact that most people like food and sending their kids to a school in a neighborhood where most parents teach their kids that knives are not for stabbing. This reasoning explains why many people choose to become incredibly well educated at their own expense to perform a job they find fulfilling (like medicine), even though profits would be better had on, let's say, Wall Street. Then along comes an asshole like Hillary Clinton who comprehends none of this and tries to "save" healthcare. The first thing someone like Hillary does is assume that the motive in medicine is GREED. That first assholian assumption poisons the Doctor-patient relationship which is the core of Medicine. With her first retarded assumption any reform she would consider undertaking is lost. She essentially takes Marx's absurd view of capitalism and, like the good lesbianic version of procrustes she is, fits that view to the situation at hand. Those with no faith in the free market and NO FAITH IN MAN can not hope to save it, or them.

Love your site

To paraphrase an old sixties phrase (The issue isn't the issue; the revolution is the issue.)

The product isn't the product; the revolution is the product!

You can't really expect much from X-Box. I like the Playstation 2 more, and this ad just proves that you can't trust that game system. the soon to be released Playstation 3 is supposed to be on par with the new X-Box, but playstation has EVERY game, so it would be best to just get it instead. Also, I understand what Kommander Kenneth is talking about, but people just need to learn how to regulate game playing. there is also those really annoying people who think that they can do what they see in video games, and therefore give the games a bad rep. I have played Grand Theft Auto III- San Andreas, and the whole game is a big joke. In all those games the main character never smokes, drinks, or does drugs on purpose. people just need to have fun with the game, and be able to tell reality from the real world.

I hear ya Kommissar Betty, loud and clear.

My frat brother and roomie from college wants me to hook up with him and play "Battlefield 1942". He always plays with the Germans via the internet and wins. I've been tempted, but if I were to do it, it would be "The Battle of Britain".
I am sure it's lots of fun and one day I'll check it out. My point is the wasted youth. Two of the biggest gamesters I work with took two days off paid from work to stand in line and then see "Revenge of the Sith". Knock-kneed and pidgeon-toed, they've never played a sport in their life, hates the military, despises Bush and in their minds....they are warriors!
Arrrrhhhhhh.......

Armchair warriors make for some of my greatest profit! Play and pay, babe, play and pay.

from the desk of $.$. Halliburton

I liked the new Satar Wars movie, but Iwould never spend that much time in line for it. I'm sure that playing online is really fun, but every game that I have I can't play online. Some of them that I could, I can't because thaey won't work on my computer, and others because I don't have the nessary connections for my PS2. I just end up playing singleplayer.

I have been in touch with members of the infamous "blogosphere," and have learned the real truth about these "Xboxes." Basically, the leftists who take the bait will all be awarded Xboxes, but there is more. This is all a Karl Rove plot. Once the Xbox is activated, it explodes, killing the innocent leftist. I read about this at the "Daily Kos" and "Democratic Underground." I also heard Al "the schmendrick" Franken talkin' about it.

Video games are a prime example of the subliminal bourgeois cultural meta-narrative.

In super mario brothers you are chasing and collecting as many gold coins as possible to score points. Kids are being brainwashed into chasing money!

Another disturbing message in Super Mario brothers is the fact that you have to eat mushrooms to grow bigger so you can jump up into, and smash the bricks above you, and move on to the next stage of the level. The programmers are effectively brainwashing our kids into believing that they have to be big, aggressive and destructive to succeed.

And what about the platform levels? If you mis-time a jump, you fall into oblivion. Again, they are brainwashing our kids into believing that there oughtn't be any safety nets. That those who fall shouldn't be helped back up. That there should be no welfare state. It just gets worse and worse!

You forgot that they promote competition between players, and with competition comes victories, which means that some people are superior to others in certain ways. We can't have that now, can we?

-Kommissar Betty

Our covert minions in the gaming industry did manage to plant one subversive message in Super Mario: eating mushrooms. Trust me, those aren't your ordinary garden variety mushrooms, comrades; those are magic mushrooms (Psilocybin)! In the immortal words of Grace Slick, "One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small."

Sorry Kommissar. I have expanded on my above comments...

https://world-socialism.blogspot.com/20 ... minal.html

Enjoy.

UPDATE:

Washington Post, of course, couldn't pass on this. In a gloating column under the heading "The Increasingly Unpopular President" one of the items (at the bottom) is this link:

Punch Out George W. And Get a FREE* XBOX 360
<br>Objective mainstream media? Sure. Seeking help from Canadian hacks to put down their own president. Why stop there? There's also France and al Jazeera... Why not send readers derectly to the ultimate source of all TRUTH - Pravda?

"50.7% of Americans voted for Bush" ?!

Correction, dumbass: 50.7% of those who voted re-elected this HACK of a president. And as I recall that the number of 'eligible' voters decreased dramatically on voting day, particularly among lower income populations. I refuse to accept that half of our country is more naive than our president. However, the more I read posts from people like you, my faith drifts ever slowly away.

Oh yeah, "They're only canadians"
It's that sort of isolated thinking that directs the hatred of so many other countires toward us. I love this country and I'll be damned if you faith-inspired, racist, rights-dampering pricks run it into the ground. Open your eyes, it's our right to bash our government, our president, and our political system. After all, if we all believed in you, we'd all be insecure, uneducated, uptight assholes. So stop crying about a stupid web advertisement when there are FAR more offensive things both on the web, and right underneath your nose. Go take your Bible and your Patriot Act and campaign for your next hack of a candidate, so the rest of us can figure out how to clean up the immeasurable damage this white house has brought upon its people.

----

So, in other words, you've entered the sweepstakes?

- Red Square

there are FAR more offensive things both on the web, and right underneath your nose.

You mean like you?

Facethefacts wrote:I love this country and I'll be damned if you faith-inspired, racist, rights-dampering pricks run it into the ground.

Yee haw, factfacer! We've just been havin' ourselves a regular tent revival here; speakin' in tongues and all. Lemme put down my bible, strychnine cocktail, and rattlesnake friends for a minute, so's I can respond to ya. OK, done. Hallelujah!

You say you "love this country." Nice try. Come on, you know that when you look at the US all you see is a legacy of imperialism, repression, genocide, and environmental rapacity. What's to love, really? Where's the social justice, the equality of results? I think what you meant to say was that you'd "love to change this country" into a socialist dystopia.

I guess you might fancy some parts of America's mixed economy; for instance, the progressive tax system (although those rich bastards aren't being taxed enough), the numerous entitlements (although they're not plentiful enough to sate redistribution mongers like you), rent control in leftist cities, cumbersome labor regulations, Amtrak, subsides for NPR, PBS, and the NEA, etc... You might also hold dear some of the Articles that constitute the Bill of Rights, but would like to eliminate some of them (the 2nd in particular) or modify others (change the 1st to only allow freedom of PC speech, so that words like "failure" will be stricken from the lexicon and replaced with self-affirming expressions like "deferred success".)

Please tell us what it is, exactly, that you love about this country?

Comrades! Facethefacts LOVES Amerikkka, I think we should all reflect on what we love about it, as well:

The New York Times
The NEA
The ACLU
Fashionable beret wearing flag burning college drop outs
Plaintiff attourneys
The rights of we smart progressive socialists to call people who disagree with our obviously correct positions on all political questions "dumbass"
I could go on, but I fear I might step on shitface er... "facethefacts" educational dialogue.
I hereby nominate he/she/it to the position of re-education minister in our gloroius peoples struggle. I look forward to learning more!

Comrades,

You must realize that Command economies are superior!!!! It is designed to maximize employment. So what if it leads to inefficient use of resources, this of course in turn leads to shortages? So what if there is only lousy state owned products because there is a lack of competition? So what if in command societies cronyism is more prevalent? The important this is that no one is rich!!!! If you disagree you will be sent to reprogramming under the guide of our fearless leader Generalisimo El Kabong (real name hidden for safety) !!!!! We must join arm in arm with the America's greatest heroes' such Michael Moore, Barbara Streisand, and Howard Dean.
Right now the Generalisimo and I are fighting for the new form of democracy with Hugo Chavez in South America. Fight of brothers and sisters!!!!!

"Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us."
-Leo Tolstoy