by Hugh Manatee Wins » Thu Jul 20, 2006 5:05 am
Reason Magazine (linked to the right-wing/libertarian Cato Institute) is having an event in Amsterdam that seems to be an intersection of Operation Mockingbird (Time), anti-liberal youth marketers (South Park), and <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Big Tobacco (UST Public Affairs, Inc.).</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>Looks to me like using the example of anti-prohibition Amsterdam to tell South Park-loving and liberal-hating American youth "Thank You for Smoking" (ah, another recent non-subliminal movie) is the motivation for this confluence of trendy right-wing culture warriors. <br><br>Anyone else read the interview with South Park's creators at the time of 'Team America'? They genuinely can't stand "rich liberal actors who bad mouth America," just like in the movie. They are I-got-mine-and-so-did-you-so-shut-up Republicans pretending to be iconoclastic social critics.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>And that makes them perfect allies for the "Just Smoke It" pseudo-liberatarian marketeers of state-sanctioned taxable addiction.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>I noticed that one of the 'Gold Sponsors' of the event is <br>UST Public Affairs, Inc. and that spells US Smokeless Tobacco which gave over a half-million to the Republican Party over the last few years.<br><br>This is one of the most interesting lists of attendees I've ever seen.<br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.reason.org/images/reasonamsterdam_sm.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br>http://www.reason.org/events/<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Reason in Amsterdam, 2006<br><br>The Grand Amsterdam Hotel<br>August 23-26, 2006<br><br>With Trey Parker and Matt Stone,<br>creators of the hit show South Park,<br>Time magazine's Andrew Sullivan, Reason magazine Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie, and Reason Senior Editor Jacob Sullum<br><br>REGISTER NOW!<br><br>Join Reason in Amsterdam for a three-day conference on the contemporary struggle for freedom in Europe, featuring:<br><br><br>» <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park, which George Foster Peabody Award judges recently labeled “TV's boldest, most politically incorrect satirical series” in awarding them a Peabody</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>» <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Andrew Sullivan, Time blogger, columnist and author of the forthcoming book The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It; How to Get It Back<br>» Ronald Bailey, science correspondent, Reason magazine and author, Liberation Biology</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>» Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within<br>» Boudewijn Bouckaert, President, Nova Civitas (Belgium)<br>» Jerry Cameron, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (USA)<br>» Peter Cohen, Ph.D., retired Director of the Centre for Drug Research at the University of Amsterdam<br>» <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Veronique de Rugy, resident fellow, American Enterprise Institute</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>» Nick Gillespie, Reason magazine Editor-in-Chief and editor of Choice: The Best of Reason<br>» <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Andrei Illarionov, former economic advisor to Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>» Mart Laar, former Prime Minister of Estonia<br>» Julian Morris, Executive Director, International Policy Network (UK)<br>» Johan Norberg, In Defense of Global Capitalism<br>» David Nott, President of Reason Foundation<br>» Ján Oravec, President, F.A. Hayek Foundation, Bratislava (Slovakia)<br>» <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Tom G. Palmer, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute and Director, Cato University</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>» Natašha Srdoc-Samy, President, Adriatic Institute for Public Policy (Croatia)<br>» Carlo Stagnaro, Istituto Bruno Leoni (Italy)<br>» Jacob Sullum, Senior Editor, Reason magazine and author of Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use<br>» <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Kyle Wingfield, editorial page writer, Wall Street Journal Europe (Belgium)</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>Amidst the beauty of Amsterdam's canals, flower markets and colorful people, attendees of Reason in Amsterdam, 2006 will enjoy a unique opportunity to learn about the contemporary struggle in Europe from prominent European and American intellectuals.<br><br>Reason in Amsterdam 2006 Lead Sponsors:<br><br>Platinum Sponsors:<br>Richard J. Dennis<br>William and Rebecca Dunn<br>Kenneth and Frayda Levy<br>The Donald and Paula Smith Family Foundation<br>Fred and Sandra Young<br><br>Gold Sponsors:<br>George F. Ohrstrom<br>John and Karen Stagliano<br>Kerry Welsh<br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>UST Public Affairs, Inc.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>Silver Sponsor:<br>James D. Jameson<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>You know how I stumbled on this Legal Drug event?<br><br>I was tracking down a disinformation smear against Joan Baez from 2004 which grotesquely spins the fact that her father was an MK-ULTRA scientist at Cornell plus she remembers ritual abuse (totally true) into a fallacious tale of her going into minstrel-show lingo in the middle of a concert as one of her '15 year-old black girl' multiple personalities.<br><br>I thought "who would conjure this crap up?"<br><br>Turns out it comes from Ronald Bailey, "science correspondent" for Reason magazine and his ugly fantasy is all over the right-wing internet. <br><br>I just ran into this in a nasty music periodical that is loaded with this Ann Coulter-esque and worse (CIA?) crap but masquerading as a local rock scene rag called 'The California Herald.' All anti-liberal, anti-woman, anti-hippy, anti-Michael Moore, anti-Neil Young, anti-George Clooney, anti-Che Guevara, you get the idea.<br><br>http://www.reason.com/links/links110404.shtml<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>November 4, 2004<br><br>Joan Baez and Me<br>She gwine tell de folks how dat ol' missuh prez'dent be a debbil!<br>Ronald Bailey<br><br>Charlottesville, VA—America's "culture war" was on full display last night at the Joan Baez concert. Tickets to the concert were a present to my mother-in-law for her 69th birthday. My mother-in-law certainly fit the demographic of the audience, or as she described it, "All the old hippies are out tonight." Let's just say that by attending, my wife and I dropped the average age of the audience by several months.<br><br>Sixty-three year old Baez came out on stage and asked how the audience felt about the election? Of course the audience groaned and moaned—after all, this IS a Joan Baez concert. For her part, Joan said that she felt like she had been run over by a truck. One audience member yelled, "You give us hope." Now I like a good rendition of "Joe Hill" or "Diamonds and Rust," as well as the next person and I do recognize her talent as a singer. And Baez has a perfect right to dedicate a song, as she did, to that insufferable, lying self-promoter Michael Moore, whom she praised for doing his best to save the country. Later Baez announced that she was going to sing a song that she sang only in countries that were undergoing extreme political strife. In fact, she hadn't sung it in the United States in the last 20 years. The song? "We Shall Overcome."<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>However, the most remarkable and disturbing episode occurred halfway through the concert when Joan stopped singing and announced that she had "multiple personalities." One of her multiple personalities is that of a fifteen year old poor black girl named Alice from Turkey Scratch, Arkansas. Baez decided to share with us Alice's views on the election. Amazed and horrified I watched a rich, famous, extremely white folksinger perform what can only be described as bit of minstrelsy—only the painted on blackface was missing. Alice, the black teenager from Arkansas Baez was pretending to be, spoke in a dialect so broad and thick that it would put Uncle Remus and Amos and Andy to shame. Baez' monologue was filled with phrases like, "I'se g'win ta" to do this that or the other and dropping all final "g's." Baez as Alice made statements like, "de prezident, he be a racist," and "de prezident, he got a bug fer killin'." Finally, since Bush won the election with 58.7 million votes to Kerry's 55.1 million, Alice observed, "Seems lak haf' de country be plumb crazy." Since Baez was reading Alice's notes, it is evident that she thinks that Arkansas' public schools don't teach black children to write standard English.<br><br>Once Joan finished her minstrelsy riff, the audience, in which I did not see a single black person, went wild with applause and hoots and hollers. I have never felt so embarrassed for a bunch of "liberals" in my life. I wonder where Baez got her notions of how poor black country folk talk—she couldn't be stereotyping, could she?</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br> <p></p><i></i>