What I said 23 years ago about propaganda, misinformation, GMOs & the American dream
In the fall of 2000, NYC was a different place. I was regularly invited to participate — in person — with other artsy, subversive types in well-attended public events. This was before smartphones, social media, the trans agenda, rampant cancel culture, and so much more that’s “normal” today.
Below is an article I wrote in late 2000 that features the transcript of a short talk I gave at that time. A talk, by the way, that I memorized and delivered without notes!
Obviously, many references are dated but I think the general vibe holds up.
Dream On
The scene is Tonic, a Lower East Side club housed in the same building as Soft Skull Shortwave. Shortwave is the bookstore operated by Soft Skull Press, the folks who published my first book, Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of “The Good War.”
It’s Sept. 20, 2000, opening night for Shortwave, and I am one of the featured “performers.” I climb on stage, a microphone in front of me and a red velvet curtain behind me, and deliver my schtick. Don Goede, Shortwave’s manager, has asked me to “sober things up.”
As you’re about to see, this is a skill I possess:
Good evening. If any of you have seen me do one of these talks, you know that I like to start with a quote from Marx. The punch line is that it’s not Karl I quote, but Groucho. So, before I get started, I’d like to get my Marx quote out of the way.
Since we’re here tonight to celebrate books, I’d like to share something Groucho had to say on the subject. “Outside of a dog,” he said, “a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, of course, it’s too dark to read.” (derisive laughter) Hey, now you know why I wanted to get it out of the way as soon as possible.
Okay, I’d like to say thanks to Don for inviting me to take part tonight. Thanks to Soft Skull Press for publishing my book. Thanks to each of you for choosing to spend your evening here with us. And, to borrow from William S. Burroughs’ 1988 Thanksgiving address, thanks for the American Dream: to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through.
Vulgarization. Falsification. Compromise, conformity, assimilation, submission, ignorance, hypocrisy, brutality, and the elite.
All of which, as Zack De la Rocha reminds us, are American dreams.
Well, I’m here tonight to state that I am a believer in the American Dream. But I use the word “dream” not as an antonym of “nightmare,” but instead as a synonym to “fantasy.” Let me give you an example.
If I told you that my book, Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of “The Good War” — available right here at Soft Skull Shortwave — was destined to become a New York Times bestseller, you might respond by saying, “Mickey Z., you’re living in a dream world.”
Well, I’d like to submit that we’re all living in a dream world.
For only in a dream world, is Bill Clinton a liberal and Hillary Clinton a feminist. And only in a dream world could Al Gore be an environmentalist.
Only in a dream world, could it be that two million Americans are imprisoned in nursing homes against their will while 1200 U.S. citizens are incarcerated per week, and we still live in the Land of the Free™.
Only in a dream world can four men with guns shoot 41 times at one unarmed man, and we still live in the Home of the Brave™. For if you shoot someone while wearing a uniform, you are a hero. But if you merely protest while wearing a costume, you might be a terrorist.
Only in a dream world, do we need a $120 pair of sneakers to “just do it.” Or do we need to go to Burger King to “have it our way.” I suggest you hit your local Burger King and tell ’em your way is a tofu sandwich on yeast-free bread with organic sprouts and test out that theory.
Only in a dream world can half the humans on the planet never made a single phone call while the other half view cell phones as a biological necessity.
And only in a dream world is a sheep no longer a sheep. Let me explain:
My favorite example of the corporate/biology nexus comes to us thanks to something called the “trade-related intellectual property rights” agreement of the GATT treaty—a precursor to the infamous WTO. You see, when a human gene is introduced to a sheep’s mammary glands to produce a protein called alpha-1-antitrypsin, a sheep is no longer a mere “sheep.”
Instead, that woolly object is now a legally patented corporate commodity known as a “mammalian cell bioreactor.”
Not a sheep, not a lamb, but a mammalian cell bioreactor. Try it out. “Mary had a little mammalian cell bioreactor.” It may not work for me, but in a dream world, it works just fine.
Only in a dream world, can we have MTV, CNN, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Oprah, People magazine, microwave ovens, computers, cable TV, the SUV, vaccinations, animal experimentation, antibiotics, Prozac, Ritalin, the interstate highway system, and wars that are “good.”
Fight the war against racism with a segregated army and you’re the good guys.
Fight the war to end atrocities by participating in the shooting of surrendering soldiers, the starvation of POWs, and the deliberate bombing of civilians, and you’re still the good guys.
Sign Executive Order 9066, intern over 100,000 Japanese-Americans without due process, and in the name of taking on the architects of German prison camps become the architect of American prison camps, and you’re FDR — a good guy.
Be part of the American business class that lent moral and financial support to the Nazi regime before, during, and after the war, and if it’s a dream world, you’re all right. And that includes GM, DuPont, Texaco, Henry Ford, Charles “Lucky” Lindbergh, and Prescott Bush.
P.S. Prescott Bush was the father of former president George H. W. and grandfather of current candidate and America’s number one mass murderer, George W. Check that, America’s number one mass murderer is Kissinger. George W. is more like America’s number one serial killer.
Only in a dream world, do you turn away Jewish refugees and send them back to certain death in Europe. You can boil the skin off the skulls of enemy soldiers to keep as souvenirs. You can drop Atomic bombs on women and children. Yet, in this dream world, you’re still “good.”
How is such a dream world possible? The answer, of course, is propaganda. That may not be a word we often use in polite discourse — we usually use “public relations” — but it’s still propaganda. Let me offer an illustration of life in a propaganda state.
I hold in my hand today’s corrections box from the New York Times. It contains seven items, so don’t let it ever be said that the corporate media does not admit its mistakes. But what’s the tacit message here?
Besides these seven minor corrections, everything else in yesterday’s Times was correct, accurate, true, and “fit to print.” It has now passed on to become part of the official record. That is how propaganda works.
The Australian scholar, Alex Carey, once listed what he felt were the three most important developments of the twentieth century. One is the growth and spread of democracy. Two, the growth and spread of corporate power. And three, the development of corporate propaganda to protect corporate power against democracy.
Well, this new century may have begun, but it’s not too late to have a say in what the three most important developments of the twenty-first century might be. But that can only be done by standing up to corporate power — which can get you in trouble.
Take it from me, you will have people question your sanity. You’ll be called paranoid and psychotic. It is at moments like that I find solace yet again in the words of William S. Burroughs who defined paranoia as “getting the facts straight” and a psychotic as “someone who has just found out what’s going on.”
But, then again, what do I know? I’ve always been the black mammalian cell bioreactor in my family.
(insert rimshot here)
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Wow, that was so good....I come from a marketing background but now work with special needs kids....feels like I have redeemed myself....anyway, that, my friend is/was an excellent summary....advertising made me see the light or darkness, in many ways....something good came out of it for me....made me run the other direction......you sound a lot like me.... I think, you are my brother from a different mother.... ❤
Stuff's only bad when "they" do it.