Monday, March 31, 2008

• Bring Your Daughter to War Day...

  Currently Listening Dial "M" for Monkey By Bonobo see related

   

  The theme of this years "take our sons and daughters to work day" for 2008 is Making Choices for a Better World. The programme is administered with the objective of showing children "the value of their education, helping them discover the power and possibilities associated with a balanced work and family life, and providing them an opportunity to share how they envision the future."

  It's not a phenonmenon found here in the UK, but US cinema and TV (the informed basis of my American cultural knowledge) would suggest its quite common practice across the Atlantic - but please do correct me if i'm wrong, and therefore render the whole subject of this post irrelevant.

  Having said that; we do have 'work experience' systems whereby you spend a week or two in an employment opportunity. Most companies aren't too keen on the practice, and shun the school-kid, who turns up full of enthusiasm in one of his Dads old suits thats two sizes too big for him, and the knotted tie he wasn't sure how to put on, but had his Mother insist he wore.

  Important workers will be too busy with day-to-day work, so the schoolchild will be assigned to the resident company monkey, who is delighted to have you under their wing as it means they can double their number of facebook friends (you and the intern from the previous week), and that despite still not being allowed to use the electric-pencil sharpener without supervision they are given a taste of responsibility after working for the firm for the 10 years.

  So you end up being their bitch for a week, and learn all manner of useful life-skills such as; making coffee, holepunching, photocopying, stapling, how to spell their name as you tipp-ex it onto their stationary to stop other colleagues from stealing it. Whilst in the mean time they sit at their desk stalking you on facebook and trying to beat their previous top score of 184 on solitaire. Then when the day is finished they go back home to their parents house, where they still live despite being 30. And they live in hope that the continual flirting with the secretary will pay off at the next staff party and she'll gets drunk and upset about recently breaking up with her boyfriend, only to then find herself waking up the following morning pregnant and in said monkeys bedroom which is still peter-pan wallpapered from when he was five, and later ends up living with him a few months down the line to save public face. (I owe this paragraph to Mervyn who was my 'superior' when on placement.) Here's a good example of such a character...

   

   

  Anyway, the notion of  "take our sons and daughters to work day" was parodied by the satarical news producer 'The Onion.' In which daughters get to "ride in the cockpit with dad or mum on bombing runs, and a few even saw the action inside tanks patrolling the triangle of death." The thought proves anything but a means to help children "discover the power and possibilities associated with a balanced work and family life, and providing them an opportunity to share how they envision the future."

   

   

  Twisted and shamefully laughable. Then when I looked at the comments underneath the video on Youtube I noticed that some people thought it was real. Now I realise the website isn't prized for insightful and intellectually stimulating observations by users, for example:

  • "I'd motorboat her" - On Britney Spears
  • "He just needs to nail a fat chick and start drinking in the morning and we'll all love him" - On George Bush
  • "I call on all nations I can to stop these terrorist killers... now watch this drive" - Okay, this was actually said by George Bush in a video I came across, rather than a comment.

  But it goes to show, like Bricker59's post the other day, which countless people fell for; just how readily we believe what we are shown and told with a pinch of salt, The media dictates and shapes our understanding of what goes on around us, and most of us, myself included, accept it at face value.  

  The retired New York Times journalist John Swinton warned that: "The business of a journalist now is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, fall at the feet of Mammon and sell himself for his daily bread. We are tools, vessels of rich men behind the scenes, we are jumping jacks. They pull the strings; we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are the properties of these men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

  And then again no matter how sensationalised the story is, the current serving Republican administration has become such a joke that perhaps its no wonder that such a concept of 'bring your daughter to war day' is plausible enough for certain people to believe.

   

   

  "Making Choices for a Better World"

   

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