Quote of the Day

"Well, she’s auto tuned to the point where she sounds like a gps, and her lyrics feel like they were free-styled by a suburban 12-year-old. Not only does she say that yesterday was Thursday, and tomorrow is Saturday, and Sunday comes afterwards (pause for a second and think about how many times you’ve heard 'afterwards' in a song, much less at the end of line), and that she says 'fun fun fun' like a malfunctioning robot, she even says that her friends are kickin in the front seat and kickin in the back seat, and then wonders where she should sit, and she does that twice. I’d rather hear gunshots from my childs bedroom than a new Rebecca Black song."

-- Brendon at What Would Tyler Durden Do? on the lightning-fast internet success of 13-year-old God-awful singer Rebecca Black

I meant to mention this yesterday but, like I said, I've been damn sick lately. The almost instantaneous transition of Rebecca Black from talentless nobody to internet joke to internet sensation to Next Big Thing among the tween set should be an object lesson for us all. It was merely a few days ago that Black's painfully terrible song and video were relegated to obscurity, but all it took was one person -- in this case comedian Michael J. Nelson -- to circulate it to the masses via Twitter for the thing to become massive. It doesn't matter one bit that Nelson chose to put it out there because he considered it the "worst video ever made" because it's already been proven over and over again that the taste of the average American tween girl is in her ass and she'd giddily worship at the base of a giant pile of elephant shit as long as you stuck a cute haircut on top of it.

Bottom line, for the sake of the rest of us and pop culture in general: think before you tweet.

Babies, Babies, Babies

A funny thing, last night's Grammys: On the one hand most of the bands I listen to likely don't need the validation of a Grammy and so the awards were and are pretty irrelevant to me, and yet I admit to really eating up the fact that what could very well be the best album of last year actually won a Grammy for being the best album of last year: Arcade Fire's superb The Suburbs. It's rare that the cool-kid, music critic crowd and the views of the recording academy -- an organization which has proven itself over the years to be slavishly devoted to mediocrity -- intertwine, but I suppose miracles never cease.

If there's one thing, though, that we as a nation can come together and revel in following the Grammys, it's that the adults of the recording industry, whether intentionally or not, managed to rise up and strike at least a minor blow directly into the heart of Justin Bieber's rabid and hive-minded tween fan base. Let's be honest: Everyone expected that insufferable little shit to take the award for Best New Artist, and, predictably, when he didn't and the award went to obscure jazz singer Esperanza Spalding, Bieber's legion of wet-between-the-legs pre-teen girls completely lost their fucking minds.

See for yourself:


Yes, that's Esperanza Spalding's Wikipedia page, which was almost immediately descended upon by outraged servants to the One True Haircut. They made fun of her name; they wailed and gnashed their teeth; they wrote in all caps about how she should "GO DIE IN A HOLE" and how "JUSTIN BIEBER DESERVED IT," which of course is true because as you know, being a jazz musician, Spalding will be gone in two weeks while the Bieber juggernaut/choke-hold isn't at all the evanescent fad the cynical would have you believe. That Bieber kid is here to stay, I tell you. What I think this highlights, though, is the need for angry tweens to tone down their inflammatory and irresponsible rhetoric before some forlorn, emotionally unhinged 13-year-old takes this kind of hate speech to heart and really does try to shoot Esperanza Spalding in the head at point blank range during one of her public appearances. I mean, it's only a matter of time. And when it happens, Justin Bieber will be to blame.

In all seriousness, as anyone who's kept up with this site over the years knows, I hate the tween domination of pop culture with the heat of a thousand suns -- and the beaver-shit crazy, overly entitled reaction to seeing their current deity go down for even just a couple of seconds explains why.

Suck it, kids. It's about time you learned to get used to a little disappointment.

By the way, as I mentioned on Twitter last night, when 16-year-old Bieber stepped onstage dressed in black leather, that wasn't rain outside your window -- it was Michael Jackson jerking off in heaven.

Related:

That Stupid Year: The Ten Most Ridiculous, Shameful or Generally Unfortunate People and Events of 2008 (#9 The American Tween)/1.5.09

Kids Incorporated/4.24.08

Quote of the Day

"And that's the rub. The eagerness of designers and the press to seize upon children and dub them 'fashionistas' isn't about kids trying mom's platforms -- it's about a relentless and incredibly twisted industry that worships at the altar of not-even-womanhood. Because if you're Marc Jacobs or Proenza Schouler or any of the designers making clothes ostensibly for adult women but eagerly peddled out to high profile middle-schoolers, you're essentially saying your wares look best on females who perhaps have not yet even started menstruating. And if you're a journalist fawning over how those Valentino and Rodarte dresses 'look good' on a child, you are part of the problem, big time."

-- Mary Elizabeth Williams in a Salon piece decrying the rise of the "tween fashionista"

Suffer the Children

As much as I hate to mention American Idol twice in one day, I just can't resist the opportunity to gloat over being at the tip of the spear in what I hope is a burgeoning movement.

And when I say "tip of the spear" I mean it, given that, yes, I was preaching this gospel two years ago.

This morning in Salon, Mary Kelly recaps Tuesday's Idol showdown and proclaims goofy, talent-deficient heartthrob Tim Urban this year's tween sensation on the show. For the record, I think she's way off base; it's harmless David Archuleta doppelgänger Aaron Kelly -- who seemed to experience his first little orgasm while pressed up against Miley Cyrus during their hug -- that's sure to nail down the obsessive tween vote over the next several weeks.

Regardless, at the end of her piece, Kelly makes the following entreatment at the prospect of the 12-year-old vote determining the future Idol winner:

"God help us all if I'm right. Parents, take your cell phones away from your children until they develop a brain!"

If that sounds vaguely familiar to regular readers of this site, that's because back in 2008, when Idol came down to nothing less than a battle between good and evil -- David Cook vs. David Archuleta -- I said this:

"Tonight, David Cook will face off against Disney/Pixar's latest CGI creation, David Archuleta.

The choice here for anyone who likes even relatively decent music is simple: Cook is already a fucking rock star; Archuleta is the lost Jonas Brother.

The problem, however, is that Archuleta will win and we'll all suffer accordingly as by this time Thursday, his sickly sweet baby face, puppy dog eyes and wispy voice will be all over the goddamned place -- unless parents across this great land of ours take decisive action.

It's simple, really. Tonight at 9PM EST, as the phone lines open and the voting begins, I propose the following: TAKE YOUR CHILD'S CELL PHONE AWAY.

That's right, prove to yourself that you're not completely beholden to your kids; that you haven't abandoned all control and allowed children to dictate the trajectory of our pop culture; that you won't let your fucking kid make a decision that you and your fellow adults will be forced to live with for months. (Think I'm wrong? Just wait until your whining tween begs, no, commands you to keep your hands secured to a life-sized effigy of Archuleta longer than any other suicidal parent in your neighborhood, all in an effort to win tickets to see Little David live -- a concert you'll be forced to attend I might add.) I realize that whether he wins or not, Archuleta will still be the golden calf of America's young, female 'Purity Ball' set, but tonight parents have the power to take a stand that will actually benefit their kids in the long run -- by making it crystal clear to them that life is all about disappointment, and no matter how much they cry or how strongly they've been led to believe that the world revolves around each of them, in the legendary words of Mick Jagger, you can't always get what you want.

Tonight's your chance to get your balls back, parents.

Don't blow it."

So see, I'm the leader of a goddamned revolution -- and I don't even need a blackboard.

Just for the hell of it, here's the extended piece I wrote leading up to the 2008 Idol finals. I'm reprinting it because I have a bad feeling that we'll see a virtual rematch this year, with the hellaciously talented Crystal Bowersox facing off against -- well, probably Aaron Kelly or Tim Urban. Whichever one gets the iCarly panties of the tween girl crowd the wettest.

"Kids Incorporated" (Originally Published, 4.24.08)

David Archuleta's going to win American Idol -- you may as well get that through your head right now.

It doesn't matter that he's a short, somewhat frumpy kid who always looks like he just got his ass kicked for his lunch money at recess, or that his willowy voice conveys all the passion and soul of Muzak, or that he actually admitted on national television -- without even a hint of irony -- that John Farnham is one of his favorite artists, or that Michael Jackson is already trying to figure out a way to get his smooth young body to Neverland. None of it makes any difference, because Archuleta has the one thing that matters -- tragically, the only thing that matters these days: The unwavering worship of every 13-year-old girl in America.

The tweens are legion, they are powerful, and they will see to it that David Archuleta is crowned boy king of the pop culture universe. In a couple of months, they'll have his face plastered everywhere you look -- and only the little girls themselves, and maybe NAMBLA, will have reason to rejoice over it.

But here's the thing: It doesn't have to be like this.

Never has there been a seeming eventuality -- in this case, a cultural zeitgeist -- that was easier to stave off.

All adults have to do, is take back the world from their kids.

Don't pretend that you don't know what I'm talking about, because it's become impossible to ignore: A generation of parents who spoil their children rotten -- hubristically buying into the notion that their specific spawn is somehow special and deserving of society's deference -- combined with the technology that gives every computer or text savvy kid a voice, whether he or she deserves one or not, has conspired to hijack a good portion of what we see and hear. It's a Wiki world, one in which a vocal majority can literally rewrite the rules and twist reality to suit its needs, and right now, the tweens are the most vocal -- and what they need, apparently, are crappy, overproduced, Disneyfied Stepford Teens to scream for and sing along to.

This is why Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers are all but inescapable right now -- and why David Archuleta is next.

Last night on American Idol, that palisade of democratic instant gratification, Carly Smithson got the hook, while utterly forgettable, high-all-the-time retard Jason Castro lived to annoy another day. The reason Smithson was sent packing, particularly as opposed to Castro, is obvious: she had nothing to offer the wild-eyed tween girl demographic. Without at least a portion of this fan base, no one on Idol stands a chance these days. Talent doesn't matter, nor does personality; all that really counts is the innate ability to give America's cell phone armed rugrats something to either fantasize about or aspire to.

I've always had an issue with parents who allow their children to take over their lives, turning them into frazzled, Nickelodeon-watching, Wiggles-vs.-Zach & Cody-debating, shadows of their former selves -- the kind of people who once listened to The Clash and now have no issue with mortgaging the home to buy Mylie Cyrus tickets. It's one thing to let parenthood change you -- to rightly make your kids a priority; it's another thing to completely forfeit your identity and become nothing more than an extension of your child's tastes. In years past, this kind of sloughing off of the various predilections that make someone an adult didn't have the far-reaching effect that it does today; before the age of viral transmission, YouTubed kingmaking and iRule, prepubescents didn't really have the ability to inflict their will on the rest of us. But all that's changed now that text messaging and the internet have allowed for the creation of a hive mind -- and what's worse, one that's turned Generation-Y into one big conduit/amplifier for whatever's been cleverly marketed in its direction. It's no longer a kid grabbing Mommy's sleeve and screaming, "I want that!" It's a kid hooking into the Borg and joining with every other kid in the country, then voting and calling and posting and commenting and asserting power in every way possible until his or her request is no longer a request but a demand, and one that's been handily brought to fruition. In the chaos theory of popular culture, all it takes anymore is a few butterflies flapping their wings to start a tempest that becomes a juggernaut. The tweens decide what they want, the parents follow, the lapdog media that are always on the lookout for the Next Big Thing trumpet it, and before you know it, it's unavoidable -- on every TV and radio and in every magazine and department store across the nation.

The easiest way to change this would be to simply stop allowing them to have such a deafening voice. Believe it or not, adults are still in charge; they can say "no" once in awhile, or take away the cell phones attached to their children's ears, or pry their hands away from the computer keyboards. The bottom line is that what a bunch of little Veruca Salts want, particularly when it comes to entertainment, is what the rest of us are getting stuck with -- and I didn't grow older, endure bad relationships, a drug addiction and various harsh disappointments, and now pay an exorbitant rent and $4.15-a-gallon for gas so that I can have David Fucking Archuleta rammed down my throat by some lovestruck 12-year-old.

To twist a lyric from The Doors -- they've got the numbers, but we've got the guns.

Or in this case, the plugs.

Pull 'em.

Thinking Outside the Inbox

The latest in our ongoing series which brings just some of the PR-firm junk e-mail I regularly get to you, the readers.

Hi Chez,

Curious if Justin Bieber is serious about working with Taylor Swift? Want to find out the inside scoop on what he and Miley Cyrus will present at the 2010 Grammys? I thought you and your readers would be interested in this VIP meet&greet with teen sensation Justin Bieber, which is up for auction at charitybuzz.com to raise funds for Let Em Play – a charity which helps youth participate in sports, entertainment, and educational programs who otherwise would not be able to afford to.

Meet Justin Bieber & Attend His Concert at the Rosemont Theatre in Chicago on March 24th or 25th: The winner and a guest will receive 2 tickets to the sold-out Justin Bieber concert in Chicago at the Rosemont Theatre on either March 24th or 25th. Both the winner and their guest will meet Justin Bieber before the concert, take pictures with him, and receive one autograph each.

Additional packages can be found at letemplay and include:

Pink Stratocaster Guitar Signed by Miley Cyrus!: No name is more recognized in the pop music and television shows of the teen crowd then Miley Cyrus aka Hannah Montana. She has dominated both genres for the past several years and is one of the most sought after people of her generation. This guitar signed by Miley Cyrus comes with our certificate of authenticity, an independent certificate of authenticity from one of the most respected authenticators in the industry, PLUS, a video of Miley actually signing the guitar!

For more information or images, please contact me at xxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.com

Best,

Matt

And now, my response:

Dear Matt,

Sounds good. I'm planning to kill myself next Thursday, so really anytime before that will work. Just e-mail all the necessary info to jesusdoyouevenreadthesitesyouresendingthisshitto@gmail.com and I'll get right on it. Oh, and it's than not then; as in "no name is more recognized in the pop music and television shows of the teen crowd than Miley Cyrus," or maybe "I'd rather be colonoscoped with the front of a Los Angeles class nuclear submarine than have to listen to Mylie Cyrus or Justin Bieber."

Glad I could help.

Toodles,

Chez : )

I Heard the Balls on Christmas Day

Last year, I pleaded with parents and fans of decent music everywhere to take away the cellphones and computers of 'tweens in an effort to ensure that David Cook took the American Idol crown from willowy little frump David Archuleta.

The idea was twofold: to take a stand for decent music and at least relatively honest talent, and to put a steel-toed boot down on the neck of the 'tween hive-mind juggernaut that had basically taken the breadth of the pop culture landscape hostage.

I thought it was a pretty entertaining way to pass the time: casually crushing the dreams of a bunch of kids who were gonna eventually have to learn that life sucks anyway.

But my idea was amateur hour compared to the stroke of subversive genius a bunch of music fans just pulled in Britain.

The Huffington Post: Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name Takes Christmas #1 Spot in UK, Beating Reality TV Star's Cover of Miley Cyrus Song/12.21.09

If you've seen the movie Love, Actually, you get an idea how this works: Each year there's a battle for the top of the singles chart in Britain -- which is determined exclusively by the buying public -- to coincide with Christmas week. Almost every time, the winner is some manner of syrupy, inoffensive pop schlock like the Spice Girls or one of Simon Cowell's little creations that he spawned in a vat in the basement of his mansion. Well, this time around a couple of very clever Rage fans got on Facebook and started an organized campaign to use one of the most incendiary singles in modern rock history (come on, "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" shouted over and over again?) to play a Project Mayhem-style prank on Christmas, Disney-approved pre-packaged pop and the eardrums of polite British society.

And it fucking worked.

Bravo, guys. I bow to you.

Now if you can just get Rage to play the song live from a boat on the Thames as it floats by during the Queen's Jubilee celebration, you'll be set.

Speaking of which, while I love every second of this, it doesn't change the fact that Rage Against the Machine -- a band that can admittedly be credited with recording some great stuff -- are basically still a bunch of pompous jackasses. Just read this hilariously over-the-top quote thanking their fans for making their big win on the British charts possible:

"This is a huge victory by and for fans of real music and we extend our heartfelt thanks to every fan and freedom fighter who helped make our anthem of defiance and rebellion the Anarchy Christmas Miracle of 2009."

Yup, that sounds like Rage. The people who got involved probably think of themselves as average folks who just got sick of hearing treacly crap at Christmas and spent a dollar or two to stick it to the Simon Cowell reality TV hit machine; to Zach and Company, they're Sandinistas coming out of the hills armed with AKs and wearing red armbands.

Sure, they could be kidding -- but when was the last time you heard Rage Against the Machine joke about anything?

And Yet You Continue To Sing and Act

The Huffington Post: Miley Cyrus: It Sucks To Publicly Embarrass Myself/8.28.09

Mouse Crap

I figure that since I already railed against the Stepford-esque evil of 'tween entertainment today, I may as well take a shot at the company behind almost all of it -- the brand name that's holding America's parents hostage by turning its kids into obedient little consumers. Of course, I'm talking about Disney. The following piece probably earned me more hate mail than just about anything else that's appeared on this site. Which is why I'm rerunning it.

"Montana Über Alles" (Originally Published, 11.20.07)

Let me make something clear right off the bat: I don't normally go around taunting small children.

About a month or so ago, a friend of mine was in town -- a guy I hadn't seen since the two of us were a couple of kids watching The Wrath of Khan for the 130th time and trying to concoct viciously creative ways to destroy our neighborhood via a seemingly bottomless arsenal of fireworks. Eager to catch up after all these years, we made the decision to hook up for dinner on a Saturday night at one of my favorite local restaurants, Balthazar; having traveled to New York City quite a few times in the past, he'd made a slew of new friends up here and asked if one of them could join us. I of course had no problem with it and when I arrived at the crowded upscale bistro -- after a hearty hug from my old partner in crime -- I was promptly introduced to a guy named Jeff who bore a somewhat frightening, doppelgangerish resemblance to Scrubs star and wuss-music connoisseur, Zach Braff.

The similarities were so striking in fact that after successfully emptying several glasses of fantastic red wine, I decided to have a little fun at the expense of the table behind ours. I had noticed the three slightly mousy middle-aged women decked out in full Dress Barn gear discreetly craning their necks in our direction since we first sat down. Every so often, they and the little girl at their table would steal a quick glance over their shoulders -- their faces registering slightly quizzical excitement -- then titter away to each other in hushed sybilance. Finally, I flashed a warm smile at them -- one that I hoped said "Why hello sisters from Michigan making your first trip to the big city! Welcome! Have no fear -- I have no intention of robbing or violently raping you or your child!" -- and blurted out what they no doubt wanted to hear.

"Hi ladies, do you know who this is?" I said, gesturing toward Jeff/Zach with my wine glass.

"We were wondering --" one of them came back sheepishly.

"Yes," I said, cutting her off. "It's Zach Braff -- you know, from the hit NBC television series, Scrubs?"

The second woman spoke up, stifling a giggle. "We're from Wisconsin." Close enough. "We weren't really sure if it was him."

This immediately made me wonder if the television reception was somehow inferior in Wisconsin, and if so, why the FCC hadn't seen to the problem.

A moment later, having wrapped up dinner, our new friends were up from their table and headed for the door, but not before stopping to get one last look at the famous face of my dining companion -- the focal point of a brush with greatness that would no doubt provide endless excitement at the next Junior League meeting or church pot luck dinner.

Jeff smiled demurely, giving off an almost supernatural level of Braffitude.

"Are you on TV too?" the little girl practically shouted into my ear, her braces gleaming in the candlelight; she was smiling so wide that I was concerned her rubber bands were going to snap.

"Me?" I said. "Nope, sorry. I work in television but I'm not actually on TV."

And that's when it happened -- the moment that, if you know anything at all about the pre-teen set these days, you could've seen coming light years away.

"Have you ever seen Zac Efron?"

Ah Jesus, that kid from the fucking Disney High School Musical thing.

The look in her wide eyes was positively feral. She looked like she'd just mainlined an entire bag of sugar.

After a brief pause -- "Actually, yeah."

"YOU HAVE?!?" She literally jumped. I was concerned she'd slip on the puddle forming directly beneath her.

"Yeah sure," I deadpanned. "I just saw him a couple of days ago on the cover of Rolling Stone. Something about him being the 'next teen hearthrob' I think."

Everything about her seemed to spontaneously slide downward five inches or so. Her face deflated. Her smile drooped into a desolate frown. Her shoulders collapsed. You'd have thought I'd just told her that her entire family had been killed when their plane collided with Santa's sleigh.

"Congratulations, kid. You're officially the youngest girl whose heart I ever broke," I muttered, downing a giant gulp of wine.

"Good meeting you -- sorry about Garden State," Jeff said with a wave to the backs of the dejected little rugrat and her family, who were now making as quick an exit as possible.

If Zach Braff has received any confusing hate mail recently with a Wisconsin postmark, I apologize.


It's probably right about now that I should mention how much I hate Disney.

I hate the Walt Disney Company for roughly the same reason that a seemingly normal Midwestern pre-teen came very close to experiencing her first orgasm in the middle of a pricey French restaurant in SoHo: because the cult of Disney has exerted and continues to exert an almost undefinable form of mind control over America's kids, hypnotizing them into swallowing wholesale an inexhaustible supply of cleverly marketed but wholly mediocre crap.

I hate the Walt Disney Company because it's somehow also able to cast the same strangely anodyne spell over America's adults, cynically brainwashing a group of people who should know better into ignoring the decades of misdeeds the company has been guilty of in favor of buying into the eerily Stepfordesque image it expertly perpetuates.

I hate the Walt Disney Company because the heartless barons behind it expect you to believe that it isn't a company at all -- that it's still just Mickey Mouse and not guys like Mickey Eisner and Mickey Ovitz.

I hate the Walt Disney Company because everything about it is a lie. It sells phony perfection -- and we happily buy it.

Disney is the definition of bullshit.

About ten years ago, troublemaking Miami Herald columnist and best-selling author Carl Hiaasen wrote a brilliant, hilarious and entirely terrifying little book called Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World. Having grown up on Hiaasen -- his muckraking spirit was part of what inspired me to become a journalist -- and being lucky enough to have met him several times while in Miami, I looked forward to every new book of his; this particular one though was like a revelation. Hiaasen managed to sum up the palpable unease I felt when it came to Disney, and he offered more than a few examples of the malignance lurking just behind the carefully constructed facade that the company showed to the world.

Just from a mischievously miscreant point of view, Hiaasen's assertion is that Disney's prime evil lies in its constant quest to improve upon reality.

He writes:

"Disney is so good at being good that it manifests an evil; so uniformly efficient and courteous, so dependably clean and conscientious, so unfailingly entertaining that it's unreal, and therefore is an agent of pure wickedness. Imagine promoting a universe in which raw Nature doesn't fit because it doesn't measure up... Team Rodent doesn't believe in (things like) sleaze, nor in old-fashioned revulsion. Square in the middle is where it wants us all to be, dependable consumers with predictable attitudes. The message, never stated but avuncularly implied, is that America's values ought to reflect those of the Walt Disney Company, and not the other way around."

Now before you begin chalking such indignation up to nothing more than sour grapes, general misanthropy or a lack of fairy dust sprinkled in one's hair, best to keep in mind that Disney has, throughout the breadth of its hegemony, engaged in corporate malfeasance so goddamned abominable that all the wishing upon a star in the universe couldn't put it right. Again, the goal of much of it has been nothing less than the creation and perpetuation of a strange utopia which doesn't exist in nature but which Disney believes should.

Disney has a script, and it will force any and all under its governance to adhere to that script word for word. There ain't no room for ad libbing when Chairman Mouse is in charge.

This is the company that drilled and dug into the fragile wetlands of Central Florida and deforested a massive area of land surrounding Walt Disney World, all to ensure that the water in the park's Bay Lake was the correct shade of deep blue.

This is the company that found itself accused of quietly poisoning and beating to death a group of federally protected large black buzzards that had the bad form to make a home atop one of the hotels on its Orlando property, potentially endangering Disney World's most salient ingredient -- the one tourists from around the world have come to expect with the certainty of a morning sunrise: absolute, inoffensive predictability.

Likewise, this is the company that needlessly killed hundreds of lemmings during the filming of its Academy-Award winning 1958 nature "documentary," White Wilderness.


Oh yeah, you didn't hear about that?

The story of White Wilderness is by now as legendary as the mass lemming death march that the film purports to show. Unfortunately, only one of the two tales -- that would be the former -- is true. Put another way, lemmings don't in fact throw themselves off cliffs; it's a myth that persists to this day thanks mostly to the good folks at Disney, who, during the making of White Wilderness, managed to capture this incredible, impossible migration on film. The movie's crew had heard the rumor about the sad fate of those suicidal lemmings and decided to travel to Alberta, Canada to see it for themselves. When they arrived, they found that not only was the story a bunch of nonsense, but that there weren't even any lemmings in Alberta, Canada -- they live almost exclusively above the Arctic Circle -- nor was there even a nearby ocean. Undaunted by such minor factual hurdles, the crew bought hundreds of lemmings from a group of Innuit schoolchildren in Manitoba (no doubt mesmerizing them with images of Mickey Mouse, the way a child molester might) and hastily constructed a snow-covered turntable which they then put the lemmings on top of and rolled cameras. The lemmings essentially ran in place, with only the background moving.

Once that was done, it was time for the money shot.

The film crew went to a nearby river, once again made sure the cameras were rolling, and then threw lemmings into the icy water by the handful. The poor lemmings of course drowned, but hey, Disney got its movie -- and an Oscar for that matter.

Knowing this story, it should surprise no one that Disney was responsible for creating a series of pro-American propaganda films that were aired all over Iraqi television -- it obviously has no issue with the innocent dying for a lie.

There are so many more examples of questionable corporate behavior: from strong-arming local governments that stood in the way of Disney World and Disneyland's "progress," to eventually creating its own puppet government -- the Reedy Creek Improvement District -- in Orlando, in charge of its own police force which answers strictly to the whims of the Mouse, to the purchase of a Caribbean island notoriously popular with drug-smugglers which the company benignly rechristened as a family friendly stop for its Disney Cruiseline, to the suing of a daycare center in Hallandale, Florida which dared to paint images of Disney characters on its walls. (The company claimed the daycare was violating its intellectual property rights.)

But Disney's true villainy lies once again not in what it's doing behind the scenes, but in the innocence of the scenes it's created to hide behind. Disney has what could be the largest and most offensive gap in the corporate universe between its image and its reality.

And most of that image is aimed at snaring your kids.

It's the perfect, self-perpetuating marketing technique -- literally raising the company's own consumers from birth.

Disney grabs your children right out of the womb, enticing them with colorful banalities and nurturing them through product placement and its own televised propaganda wing -- Cap Cities/ABC TV -- until brand name recognition is practically Pavlovian. As they grow, Disney plays the role of their BFF -- growing alongside them and responding to the very wants and needs that it's surreptitiously insinuating into their consciousness.

In effect, creating its own demand for dreck like High School Musical.

Or -- God save us all -- Hannah Montana.


I don't envy parents of young girls right now. I would probably consider going the Disney-approved-lemming route if it meant that I could avoid having to indulge a screaming 'tween desperate to lick the sweat from Miley Cyrus's ass crack. The High School Musical craze was utterly surreal to me; this Hannah Montana shit is just flat-out baffling. I'd like to think that the pre-teen worship of the young Miss Cyrus is at least amusing to most parents, who unlike their kids remember a time when her father Billy Ray was the most ridiculous man in America. Of course that's assuming that most middle-American moms these days would be unwilling to admit to their complicity in the God-awful "Achy Breaky" craze -- the one which held this country hostage for what seemed like an eternity during the early 90s.

Now, proving that Billy Ray Cyrus's sperm would indeed mutate exactly as many had feared, his daughter has taken her rightful place as the new Gozer the Gozerian of popular culture.

She's Blossom without the nose. She's Hillary Duff without the idiot from Good Charlotte. She's Hannah Montana!

And she's turning millions of girls below the age of 14 into little Veruca Salts, angrily demanding that their parents drop everything to buy them CDs, DVDs, concert tickets, lunchboxes and anything else adorned with the image and featuring the painfully average vocal ability of Miley Fuckin' Cyrus.

It's gotten so bad, what with Christmas (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company) approaching and all, that people are now joining in a class-action lawsuit against Miley Cyrus's online fanclub because they feel that they were lured into buying up memberships with seductive promises of a first crack at tickets to the sold-out Hannah Montana tour.

Let me say that again: People are suing because they couldn't get tickets to see Billy Ray Cyrus's daughter. Who needs the striking late night writers? That kind of comedy gold writes itself.

Meanwhile, in Tampa, a 35-year-old man hung on to a nine-foot-tall statue of Hannah Montana's golden calf-esque likeness for six days to win tickets to a sold out HM show. "I'm ecstatic. It's like a dream come true," he said just moments after the final challenger died of shame, releasing her grip and ensuring his victory.

Look, I'm the first one to agree that the mitigating factor of a phenomenon like Hannah Montana is that, for most young girls, it likely represents the final relatively harmless stop on the pop culture line before MTV gets its hooks into them and graduates them to full-blown sluthood with noxious crap like The Hills. But even MTV -- which is owned by Viacom -- is either unable or unwilling to make use of the kind of full-spectrum corporate synergy that Disney brings to bear when it comes to marketing pabulum like Hannah Montana and High School Musical to America's kids. The onslaught from film, broadcast television, cable TV, DVD, publishing and music outlets is simply unavoidable. A child has almost no choice but to hop on the bandwagon.

Which of course is exactly the way Disney wants it, because for those engineering another generation of consumers -- Imagineering, if you'd like -- Hannah Montana is just the next phase in a lifelong strategy.

I have no doubt as to what that little girl from Wisconsin is already bugging her mom for this Christmas.

Sure, it's a small world after all -- but it's all Disney's.


And as a bonus, here's the bit on 'tweens from the year-end piece, "That Stupid Year: The Ten Most Ridiculous, Shameful or Generally Unfortunate People and Events of 2008."

9. The American 'Tween

Title: Consumer, Arbiter of All Entertainment, Not the One Paying the Goddamned Cell Phone Bill

Big Pharm Recommended Treatment: Ritalin (for the Kid), Xanax (for the Parents)

The Facts: If you're the relatively sane parent of a 13 year old girl, chances are you love the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus, right? No, of course you don't. What you've done is ceded your own tastes to those of your kids, who robotically inundate you with the same crappy music, movies and TV shows that Disney giddily bombards them with 24/7. This wouldn't be such a big deal were it not for the fact that your children are no longer harmless islands unto themselves; thanks to the internet and cell phone text messaging, they've coalesced into a hive mind and, what's worse, one that's turned them into a giant conduit/amplifier for whatever garbage is being cleverly and cynically marketed in their direction. In our new Wiki-world, those with the loudest voices can dictate what we all see and hear -- they can literally adjust reality to suit their needs and, well, have you ever heard how loud a 'Tween girl screams for the fucking Jonas Brothers? In 2008, the 'Tween demographic asserted its authority in unprecedented ways, forcing the rest of us to endure a seemingly endless cavalcade of Disney "Stepford Teen" entertainment, from High School Musical 3 to Miley and, by extension, her father -- the honest-to-Christ most spectacular douchebag on the planet -- Billy Ray Cyrus. We listened to the music, paid to see the movies and bought every manner of merchandise until our kids became walking billboards for this shit. Parents willingly allowed a million little Veruca Salts to inflict their will on the world, and did nothing to stop it.

Mitigating Factor: Well, they did almost nothing to stop it. David Cook somehow managed to wrestle the American Idol crown away from frumpy, willowy-voiced 'Tween fave David Archuleta. That's gotta be a step in the right direction.

"By This Time Next Year, She'll Be..." More than likely, pregnant. Or a member of the Pussycat Dolls. Or maybe suckered into sex with a guy like Chuck Bass on Gossip Girl, who'll then turn around and post naked pictures of her on the internet so that she can be just like her erstwhile idol, Vanessa Hudgens. But none of this will happen before she drags you kicking and screaming to see The Jonas Brothers: 3D in February.

Related:

DXM: Cyrus the Virus/6.17.08

DXM: Kill Hannah/12.12.07

Drama 'Tweens

Tonight, the season premiere of American Idol began with a shortened version of this clip. It features a group of frenzied 'tween girls reacting as David Cook's name is announced as the winner of last year's Idol.

Obviously, they were obsessively pulling for Disney character David Archuleta -- which means that, obviously, their response to hearing that he just lost is an exercise in Zen-like calm and self-control.

This is, quite possibly, the greatest thing I've ever seen.

Seriously -- I can watch it over and over and over.



Related:

DXM: That Stupid Year: The Ten Most Ridiculous, Shameful, or Generally Unfortunate People and Events of 2008/1.5.09

DXM: Kids Incorporated/4.24.08