Recently a proud parent sent me this link to the public service announcement "Premonition" because their child had a small role in the final production. Before proceeding, allow me to congratulate the young actor and parent: Acting is a tough, tough gig and often one has to take small, far from glamorous roles in order to build up a resume’. This is an early step in a budding career, and I trust the young actor’s career will be filled with many more roles of a substantially larger and more prominent nature.
Now that I’ve made nice to parent and actor -- neither of whom had anything to do with the creation or content of said link -- I’m going to rip this PSA a brand new one.
To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, I know the stench of rancid hypocrisy when I smell it.
The "Premonition" PSA tells us that we are bad bad bad bad BAD people when we buy counterfeit goods because we let the terrorists win because it harms American business and supports organized crime and overseas child labor.
As the incestuous osteopath would say, give me a mutha-luvin’ break!
First off, DVD piracy is harming the studios and thus forcing them to close down production and fire hard working Americans?
Bull-loney.
And let’s not even talk about how un-hip & outta step this is: Nobody in North America buys pirated DVDs of current movies anymore, they just download free torrents on line. (Duh.)
Where DVD piracy is rife is in Asia, notably China and India.
You know, those places where the big media companies send their product to be mass produced because it’s cheaper than having it done in the US.
(And while we’re at it, where all those name brand designer labels and toys get manufactured, too; and for the same damn rea$on.)
The Asian manufacturers have a very simple, pragmatic way of looking at the issue:
Screw you, round-eyes Hey, we deliver everything we promised to you, why are you begrudging us a few bucks off our own people?
Oh, it’s because you want to charge us higher rates for your product, rates that our people can’t afford because to get the best cost you go to factories that pay their workers the least?
In that case, screw you and the overfed horse you rode in on.
Or perhaps, in the context of the season, “Scrooge you” would be more apropos.
You (the media companies) have spent the better part of a century telling us our entertainment was “free”. Oh, yeah, we had to watch / listen / look at some advertising, but there’s no discrete charge for individual shows.
When cable & pay channels came along, the same philosophy applied, albeit in modified form: The audience had to pay, but once they paid for access (with the exception of pay-per-view events), everything else was free.
Now, you media companies screamed, bitched, and moaned when people started time-shifting that content for their own convenience. Not everybody wanted to enjoy your media at the times you appointed and in the manner you specified.
You hated that, ‘cuz you knew they were omitting the advertising when they time shifted, either blitzing right past it or editing it out if they planned to save a copy.
And you really hated the idea that people would think they were entitled to make copies of stuff for their own enjoyment that was broadcast over the airwaves owned by the public, or piped into their homes through cables they paid for. How dare those b / tards not pay you for the privilege of being robbed repeatedly?!?!?
If you could find of way of charging people every time they remembered a TV show or song, you’d try to get that legislated. Scrooge you, indeed.
So don’t you dare attempt to feed us that crap about people opting for the least expensive version of media or brand labels / knock-offs being harmful to American workers and business. You greed pigs had already shut down American factories and driven small American stores out of business with your chains and big box warehouse stores.
You are buying identical product from the exact same manufacturers using the exact same under-age workforce and you are selling it at grotesquely over-priced rates by heavily promoting same to customers who don’t have that much money to spend anymore because the factories and stores where they used to work have been put out of business by you !
Scrooge you and the guy who shoes your horse.
When I look at this ham-fisted attempt to make common Americans feel dirty and guilty and mammy-jammin’ treasonous about resenting being robbed by you, I am outraged and disgusted. I think -- using purely metaphorical terminology -- that you scum-suckers should be drag-hanged over a mile and a half of broken Coke™ bottles for the edification of the troops and the amusement of the little children.
And again, to the parent and young actor, none of this rant is directed at you. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do when starting your career. Hopefully your next gig will be for something less shameful, like promoting relief from painful rectal itch.