CSotD: Wanna buy some rope?
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I think this is the first time I've revisited a story arc, except for occasionally featuring an update at the bottom of the posting. First time I've gone there twice for a full post.
But the chocolate milk arc at Deflocked has taken some twists and turns and, while I already did a mini-update a few days after that initial rant, today's strip put me on the floor again, because it's not a connection I had made and I've been following this story.
To be fair, it probably wasn't the same school board, because the "sponsorship" and "naming rights" controversy was almost 20 years ago. That link will take you to a story from 1994 about how District 11 in Colorado Springs — where my kids had gone to school before we moved back East — had started putting ads in their schools, notably 7Up ads on the sides of buses.
"We found that one of the things we do have is exposure," the principal of the district's high school told the press. "We thought, `We can start marketing our schools.' "
Yes. Yes, you can.
Lenin, famously and perhaps apocryphally, said that, if you want to hang a capitalist, he will sell you the rope, and this is a good example of how greed can sweep in on several levels to undermine values.
You start with people who refuse to pay to educate the next generation, add a dash of opportunism from an ad agency that, according to this story, was taking a 41 percent cut of ad revenues, and blend in a school board more attuned to fiscal realpolitik than ethical considerations et voila!
Hey! The new sheriff is a n….
There was blowback among columnists and children's advocates over this issue, but if Coke wanted to furnish a new scoreboard for the football field in exchange for exclusive vending rights in the school, well, that was one more expense the school and the booster club didn't have to face. (As long as they continued to make their sales quota, which might take some promotional effort on their part.)
Mind you, there was the occasional flare-up in the news, like the 2000 demiscandal Keith Knight reported on:
Dan Wasserman also decried the commercialization of our children …
… but only the cartoonists and a few children's rights advocates seemed to care. It was more important to balance the budget than to look out for the best interests of children.
And so the phenomenon of selling out our schools, and our kids, in the name of fiscal responsibility grew and grew, and so did our children, as Tony Auth pointed out in that same year …
Consarnit, I said, the new sheriff is a n…
But the disconnect is not between what the boards said then and what the boards are saying now. If anything, school boards are more pragmatic, less idealistic, than they were at the start of the century, largely bolstered by a public that has been persuaded that caring about ethics, or children's health, is not an issue of public responsibility.
Dadgummit, lissen ta me! I said the new sheriff is a n…
What happened, rather, is that the USDA declared that school menus had to conform to good health practices, and that, while the occasional bake sale would be permitted, the constant flow of junk food, both in bake sales, at school stores and in vending machines, had to come to an end.
Or the schools could give up the federal subsidies for their lunch programs.
So it's not a matter of school boards being inconsistent. They're still more concerned with fiscal issues than with protecting our children's health. It's just that the prospect of losing federal dollars was more compelling than the benefits of selling out our kids to the soft-drink bottlers.
These capitalists are still intent on selling rope, no matter what you intend to do with it.
The difference now is that, like I been tryin' to tell ya, the new sheriff is a n …. is a n…. is a n….
… is a nutrition freak!
Or at least his wife is. In any case, we now have one more example of the socialist, nanny-state government intefering with local governance, states rights and the free market system for no other reason than the long term health of our children.
As if that were anybody's business!
And, speaking of updates:
The Kenosha Festival of Cartooning Kickstarter Campaign continues. The idea of building audience for comics by offering a free festival where they can meet artists and learn more about the medium is a great idea and, even if you can't attend, the longterm benefits to cartoonists and their industry, plus some cool rewards, should compel you to support it.
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