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C-based Carl’s Jr. was founded by an outstanding gentleman, a devout Catholic and patriotic American, Carl Karcher. He sold the company late in his life and all the good, wholesomeness he put into his advertising campaigns disappeared, replaced with Paris Hilton making love to a hamburger and similar tawdry and sleazy campaigns designed to appeal to their target market: sex-obsessed, hormone-drenched nitwits.

That was then.  It’s gotten worse.  Carl’s Jr. and its co-brand, Hardee’s, have just introduced donut holes on their breakfast menu - a nasty looking product of fried, cinnamon-sprinkled bread globs with a sugar and chemical dipping sauce that looks to be made of 100% artery plaque.

OK, so that should be fairly simple to advertise without offending the multitudes and crumbling the civilization.  But what fun would that be?

In the first TV spot, the announcer says Hardee’s is announcing its new product, “Biscuit Holes,” and asks passers-by, who look like normal people but are really gutter-dwellers for hire, what they think the product should be named.  Cover the kids’ eyes; here come some of their responses: Goodie Balls, Hole Munchers, Puffy Nuts, Melting Holes.

Not content to let that pass by without some one-upsmanship, the announcer cleverly holds up two of the balls side by side and asks the last taster, “What about ‘Bistecles?’”

Not appalling enough? There’s always TV spot #2, where the announcer has conventional donut holes and Carl’s/Hardee’s Biscuit Holes on a little table, the donut holes marked “A” and the Biscuit Holes marked “B.”  He asks another group of sex-obsessed sell-outs which they prefer.  You guessed it:

“The B hole has it over the A hole.” “The A hole seems kind of small.” “The A hole tastes nasty.”

These are not commercials that play on late-night pay-per-view soft porn channels. They are designed for every day, all day TV - the kind families watch together and kids watch alone. The TV we watch after church on Sunday.

One Million Dads has set up an auto-letter you can use to send a protest letter to the company’s president, Andrew Puzder.  I suggest you click here and fire one off.  And, come to think of it, you might want to offer him a name or two of your own. Like sleazeballs.

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n Calvin Klein’s world, promiscuity reigns, and young girls are gang-banged by three guys (there’s a third on the floor - see his knee?) and it’s all jolly fun as long as you’re disrobing from Calvin Klein clothing in the process.

I don’t think that’s an accurate assessment of what most kids are up to nowadays, and I certainly don’t think Klein should be promoting it on this billboard, which now is riding high over a high-traffic part of New York City.

Not that many years ago, sex in advertising meant an attractive woman in an elegant dress standing next to the latest Buick, or a wholesome girl in a swimsuit that left everything to the imagination drinking a Coke.  Now it means a slut in a lip-lock and under-the-pants butt-grab.  That’s not sex in advertising; it’s porn in advertising.

If you agree and would like to send a message to Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation, the company that owns Calvin Klein, One Million Dads makes it easy.  They’ve put up a letter-generator, so in less time than it’ll take that girl to catch an STD, you can send a letter to Calvin Klein telling the president of the company:

Dear President Shiffman:

I am highly offended by your company’s disrespect for the millions of parents whose children will be exposed to your latest billboard ad.

Your company does not deserve, nor will it get, my family’s business as a result.  I implore you to consider how your immoral actions affect the youth of our nation.

Please order the removal of your offensive billboard in New York City and cancel any plans to place it elsewhere.

Then give the company a call at 866-513-0513.

T

his post shall go un-illustrated for reasons that will soon become obvious.  Also to become obvious:  Higher education in America is on a possibly unstoppable downward spiral, with students who couldn’t care less and administrators who are perfectly content with that. From the SacBee:

A student group at the University of California, Davis, plans to show a hardcore pornographic movie in a campus lecture hall Thursday night.

The student run Entertainment Council announced on its Facebook page that it will be showing “Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge,” a big-budget porn movie that combines computer-generated special effects with explicit sex scenes.

Student leaders for the group did not immediately return phone calls and e-mail messages.

Of course not. They’re cowards.

The movie has been showing on college campuses around the nation, including at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The company that distributes the movie, Digital Playground, of Van Nuys, has been giving it away for campus screenings.

Company spokesman Christopher Ruth said porn no longer has the stigma it once did, and campuses have been showing the $10 million porn movie for entertainment and educational purposes.

So if child porn someday has no stigma, we should just be cool with that? And even if Ruth’s statement is true, not having the stigma porn once had is not exactly a ringing endorsement.

UC Davis spokesman Andy Fell said the campus does not censor student events, performances or publications and had no plans to cancel the event.

Of course not. To censor something would require having to pretend you have values, and we can’t have that!

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ighth grade was the grade that almost turned me into a teacher, because I had three great role models.  All were great teachers, but that’s not what drew me to them; it was the certainty with which they approached the molding of our impressionable minds.

Miss (not Ms., not back then) Karvellis could nail a kid in the back row with a perfectly aimed, dusty eraser, putting a quick end to whispering, sleeping, note-passing or whatever other disrespect was going on back there.  Mr. Hill would periodically stroll down an aisle, hands behind his back (hands he’d secretly covered with chalk dust), grab a kids head, tilt it back, reach into his mouth, and extract a wad of gum, leaving a mouth-parching deposit of chalk behind. And the third teacher - who’s name I’ve forgotten - handled boys who cheated or broke the rules quite fairly:  Write an essay or take the paddle.  We all took the paddle, and got out before the girls, whose only option was the essay.

They taught me respect for the rules, and more importantly, respect for the intelligence and guidance of adults.  Every kid smote with an eraser, trying to draw saliva back into his chalk-filled mouth, or walking bandy-legged after a smacking knew the punishment was just, the crime was real … and their behavior would change, at least for a while.

Now, thanks to idiot educators and zero tolerance, we have Savana Redding’s case being argued before the Supreme Court.  “Educators” in her small AZ town thought she might have violated the school’s zero tolerance drug policy, so:

An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.

The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.” (NYT)

How mind-numblingly stupid, first that something as strong as two Advils is considered a drug, second that any rational thought is cut short by zero tolerance, and finally, that anyone would strip-search an eighth grader - yes, an eighth grader.

How different Redding’s school experience was from mine; how different her opinions of “educators” must be.  What, exactly, did they educate her on that day?  Respect for authority? Rational thought? Acting responsibly?  How much better it would have been for her if she had encountered one adult that day with the rational cognitive power of Ninth Circuit judge Kim McLane Wardlaw who said,

“It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights.  More than that, it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity.”

Amazingly, the school officials also have zero tolerance for hand-slapping, in this case, their hands being slapped by the court, which found the school to have violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches.  That sounds like a conclusion any rational person would agree with, but the school has appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which is hearing it this session.

And they’re sooo bold in standing by their decision!

Mr. Wilson (the assistant principal) declined a request for an interview and referred a reporter to the superintendent of schools, Mark R. Tregaskes. Mr. Tregaskes did not respond to a message left with his assistant.

Wilson thought he had grounds for the search because Redding had acted rambunctuosly at a school dance two months earlier, and he thought she had served alcohol at a party before the dance … two months ealier.  She says it was soda and kids that age are goofy.  Who sounds more educated to you?

The ACLU is handling Redding’s case.  In this case, I’m on their side, and hope - counter to their usual performance - they help prevent the further crumbling of our civilization, at the hand of educators who cover their zero ability with zero tolerance, and in so doing, are destroying the minds of the children we entrust to them.

I’

ve researched this quite thoroughly, and I can assure you that in the 1950s Mattell never offered a Cocktail Barbie, complete with a little whisky sour and chic cigarett holder.  Nor did they offer Coke-Head Barbie in the 70s, with a razor-scratched mirror in her white powder-filled compact.  So why this?

Barbie turns 50 this month, and to shake off a midlife crisis she’s getting tattooed …

Mattel Inc. has released Totally Stylin’ Tattoos Barbie. The doll comes with a set of more than 40 tiny tattoo stickers that can be placed on her body. Also included is a faux tattoo gun with wash-off tats that kids can use to ink themselves.

A spokeswoman for the El Segundo toy maker said it was a great way for youngsters to be creative with their pint-sized gal pal. (LA Times)

Child psychologist Dr. James Margulous told Fox News that it’s all no big deal:

The tattoos are not offensive; they’re puppy dogs and stars.  It doesn’t have snakes and marijuana cigarettes on it. 

Well, that makes it all better.  No matter if Barbie influences girls that getting butterflies needled deep into their skin, just so long as they don’t tatt something icky, Mattell shouldn’t be criticized. 

If parents don’t succeed in forcing Mattell to withdraw this horrible idea by not buying Totally Stylin’ Tattoo Barbies for their clean-skinned little girls, I wonder if Mattell will follow up with a Girls Gone Wild Barbie, complete with a “c’mon boys!” tattoo above her rear end and a Playboy bunny on her cleavage, or maybe a 65 Years Old with Sagging Skin and Droopy Tattoos Barbie to remind little girls that tattoos, unlike third husbands, are forever. 

No, in the name of protecting our civilization from further crumbling, they should stick to that good old nearly anorexic, skirt too short, blouse too tight Barbie.

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IDS activists and the Armani retail chain have decided to tarnish the romance of Valentine’s Day and cut short the innocence of children by placing a piece of “condom art” in 76 high-traffic, public malls around the country - and are outraged that one brave mall manager stood up to them.

The “art” is a heart made up of red condoms, with the slogans “Give Love/Get Love” and “Practice Save Love.”  The National AIDS fund is behind the campaign.

Of course, it’s poppycock.  “Love” has just about nothing to do with the spread of AIDS.  Hedonism, drunken or drug-fueled promiscuity, infidelity, multiple partners, sex with crack whores - these are the AIDS-spreaders, and none has the least connection to love, which makes the connection to Valentine’s Day unfortunate, at the least.

Granted, some one could fall head over heals in love with someone who is HIV-positive, and will need a love-condom if he or she wants to consummate the love without terminating his or her future.  But do we have to promote condom use to this modestly sized group in the halls of malls filled with youngsters with sharp eyes and big curiosity?  Do six-year-olds need to know about condoms?  Do their moms and dads need to be forced to answer questions about condoms when their children are at an age when it’s just not necessary to talk about sex at all?

James Westcott, general manager of the Somerset Collection mall in Troy MI doesn’t think so, and exerted his prerogative to prohibit his mall’s Armani Exchange store from displaying the sign.  Kudos to him!

Of course the AIDS lobby sees it a bit differently.  Says the local AIDS group spokesperson:

“We are pretty surprised that in this day and age anyone would think condoms are controversial. Most folks are way beyond that; it’s a 1980s mentality.” (source)

Don’t count me as one of them.  I can’t look at a condom without associating it with a sexual act; are you with me on this?  I can’t consider a condom in an AIDS display without associating it much more with illicit sex than with monogamous sex; are you still with me?

Well, the managers of 76 malls aren’t, and they think it’s fine to display a rubber, a scuzz-bucket, a cock sock in the hallways of their malls as a perfectly appropriate Valentine’s Day display … and civilization crumbles a little bit more.

hat-tip: Jim

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avid Ogden, the porn-lovin’, baby-hatin’, Europe-fawnin’ Obama designee for #2 at Justice, is the kind of guy who would salivate at the opportunity to defend the villain in this case - and the fact that he would, and the fact that he would want to wouldn’t stop his nomination, and the fact that this happened in America in 2009 is a sign of our crumbling civilization:

Eighteen and pregnant, Sycloria Williams went to an abortion clinic outside Miami and paid $1,200 for Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique to terminate her 23-week pregnancy.

Three days later, she sat in a reclining chair, medicated to dilate her cervix and otherwise get her ready for the procedure. (source)

Not that it really matters to me since it’s obvious that it’s a kid at conception, note that Williams is about as close as you can get to her third trimester, and her baby was on the cusp of viability outside the womb.

Only Renelique didn’t arrive in time. According to Williams and the Florida Department of Health, she went into labor and delivered a live baby girl.

What Williams and the Health Department say happened next has shocked people on both sides of the abortion debate: One of the clinic’s owners, who has no medical license, cut the infant’s umbilical cord. Williams says the woman placed the baby in a plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.

Police recovered the decomposing remains in a cardboard box a week later after getting anonymous tips.

Disgusting.  Shocking. But what actually happened was actually even more disgusting and shocking than this account, which, believe it or not, is sanitized. Here’s how events were described in the lawsuit Williams has filed:

The complaint says one of the clinic owners, Belkis Gonzalez came in and cut the umbilical cord with scissors, then placed the baby in a plastic bag, and the bag in a trash can.

Williams’ lawsuit offers a cruder account: She says Gonzalez knocked the baby off the recliner chair where she had given birth, onto the floor. The baby’s umbilical cord was not clamped, allowing her to bleed out. Gonzalez scooped the baby, placenta and afterbirth into a red plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.

It’s just another day at the office for Rodriquez.

As I said, Williams is now suing Renelique - something she has grounds to do, since I’m sure the whole ordeal was far more traumatizing than she anticipated. It’s something no woman should go through, especially an 18-year-old. But in a more cynical view, her lawsuit is just another sign of our crumbling civilization. One minute she was just fine with having Renelique abort and throw out her baby, and in the next moment she sees an opportunity to make some quick bucks through a lawsuit.

Fortunately, our civilization hasn’t crumbled so much that Renelique isn’t at risk of losing his license and Gonzales can’t be charged with murder. The Haiti-trained doctor’s license is indeed at risk, and an autopsy showed there was air in the baby’s lungs, so it was born alive. That makes sticking it in a plastic back and throwing it inthe trash grounds for murder - even if abortion isn’t.

Hat-tip: Jim

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or those of you not familiar with the lingo, let me quickly tell you before you click that little arrow that NSFW stands for “not safe for work,” and as you might guess from the broccoli lust in the image, this video is definitely NSFW.  That is, unless you work at a lingerie model agency.

So if you’re at work, I’ll describe it to you.  It shows women in the sort of state of undress that would cause al Qaeda to plan another terror attack to take out the Great Satan.  They are lithe, lingerie clad, and given to provocatively licking and sensually fondling … vegetables.  In soft light.  With nasty music.

In a sign that our civilization has not completely crumbled (yet), NBC rejected the ad, which was submitted by PETA (People Eat Tasty Animals) for a Superbowl showing.

The message of the ad is simple enough, in bold headlines between the photos:

Studies show vegetarians have better sex. Go Veg.

I take issue.  Most vegetarians are young, for example, while thirty somethings constitute only 19 percent of all primary
grocery shoppers, they account for 26 percent of vegetarian shoppers. Since they’re basically younger, they’re going to have basically better sex, with our without a veggie diet.  That’s if you can define “better sex.”  PETA doesn’t.  And I don’t really want them to.

Be that as it may, it wasn’t the words that killed the ad, it was the images, which according to PETA, NBC summarized as:

• licking pumpkin
• touching her breast with her hand while eating broccoli
• pumpkin from behind between legs
• rubbing pelvic region with pumpkin
• sex with broccoli (fuzzy) [and edited by me]
• asparagus on her lap appearing as if it is [well, I can't really let that description in this blog]
• licking eggplant
• rubbing asparagus on breast

You get the idea.  Do you also get the idea that PETA never intended NBC to run this ad?  Indeed, its Web site shows eight other ads classified as “too hot for TV,” most of them apparently too hot for the same sort of reasons.

If they really wanted to get an ad on the Superbowl, you think they’d have learned by  now.  But of course, they don’t want to pay a gazillion bucks to get an add on the Superbowl.  They want to produce an ad the networks can’t run, get it rejected and get a bunch of publicity.  Like this.  I’m a pawn.  It’s no different than their scantily clad demonstrations, which are guaranteed to make the sex-starved evening news.

(I guess you could conclude that if a lot of vegetarians are young women who are prone to taking off their clothes in public, then it would explain why they have more - if not better - sex.)

I post this up under the “Our Crumbling Civilization” banner in part because PETA in all that it does is emblematic of crumbling .  They’re too addled to understand that humans have the God-given gift of sentience and other animals don’t, and society is too enthralled by their reliance on sexy publicity to whack ‘em upside the head.

But more, it’s here because of how thoroughly exploitative of sex our society has become, and how hypocritical we are about it.  Watch NBC any evening and you’ll see tops lower and skirts higher than any you’ll see on any street because they’ve found it’s easier to get viewers through great bodies than through great drama.  Yet when they rightly turn around and axe the PETA ad, they do it without a blush of shame.

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hat’s up with those Dylan girls, anyway? On the plus side, we can say that they are debt-adverse, neither wanting to accrue mountains of college loans in their pursuit of higher education. On the negative, they’re not opposed to a nookie-financed education.

First Avia Dylan paid her way through college by being a prostitute. She says it took just three weeks of hooking to make all the tuition and book money she needed. I don’t see the numbers adding up myself … unless she was hooking full-time with Elliot Spitzer.

Now sis Natalie is in the news, as she auctions off her virginity to pay for her Masters degree - in women’s studies, yet. How clever. She’ll be able to finance her degree while researching what inevitably will become the topic of her thesis: Virginity, Value and Values in the Post-Bush Era, or some such thing.

“I know that a lot of people will condemn me for this because it’s so taboo but I really don’t have a problem with that.

“My study is completely authentic in that I truly am auctioning my virginity but I am not being sold into this. I’m not being taken advantage of in any way.

“I think me and the person I do it with will both profit greatly from the deal.”

Well, at least one of them well. According to the news account, bids for Natalie’s flower are now in the $3.2 million range.

“It’s shocking that men will pay so much for someone’s virginity, which isn’t even prized so highly anymore.”

It’s a good thing Ms. Dylan is in a throw-away academic program like women’s studies instead of something useful like economics.  She doesn’t appear to understand that it is precisely because virginity supposedly isn’t prized so highly that hers is so valuable.  In a world where girls are tossing away their virginity with gay abandon, the value of an intact hymen must necessarily soar.

And that’s why Ms. Dylan makes her way into an “Our Crumbling Civilization” post.  On her own, she’d at best get an “our tawdry, sad civilization” recognition.  But the inherent value of virginity has always been that it was held onto as an act of love.  Selling it as a commodity should deprive it of its value, making it little more than the infliction of pain for money.  That so many men value so highly the deflowering a complete stranger who did not cherish her virginity for them is a sign that sexuality has become very sick in our crumbling civilization.

hat-tip: Memeorandum

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omewhere in CNN’s vast management hierarchy is a person who actually thought it would be a good idea to invite foul-mouthed Kathy Griffin to co-host the cable network’s New Years Eve broadcast from Times Square with Anderson Cooper.  Those of us with common decency figure that person is face-palming today; but, hey, it’s CNN and he/she is probably a hero.

In the clip above, Griffin yells at an off-camera heckler:

Screw you! Why don’t you get a job, buddy? You know what? I don’t go to your job and knock the d- - - out of your mouth.

A  bit mystified by the blanks?  Think plural form of a slang word for a particularly censorable part of the male anatomy.  Got it?  Thrilled that it went out live over CNN?  Amazed that she contained herself with “screw you?”

In another segment, Griffin said she’d like to get a pap smear from CNN’s medical reporter, and in another she called Glenn Beck a “heroin addict Mormon.”

The NYPost asked CNN for a comment but the network is not as loose-lipped as Griffin - another case of the media no-commenting when it’s the target of prying questions.

Some of you may recall that during her acceptance speech for an Emmy (note to self: pat yourself on back for having not watched the Emmies for the last couple of decades), Griffin let loose with this memorable acceptance speech:

A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. So, all I can say is, ‘Suck it, Jesus.’ This award is my god now.

One might think quotes like this and the weekly drivel oozing out of her “Life on the D-List” show would have given CNN pause before offering Griffin the New Years gig, but c’mon - this is CNN and its sensibilities are just not sensible.  They surely anticipated Griffin would be this foul-mouthed and thought it would be good for their ratings if she spewed live from Times Square.

They got just what they wanted and America started 2009 all the worse because of it.  How would Jesus react to all this?