Never underestimate the ability of the entertainment industry to plumb the depths of bad taste, and don't make the mistake of thinking it's some new thing, either.
For example, the early TeeWee show This Was Your Life surprised one Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto with a mystery guest from his past: The guy who dropped the a-bomb on him! Surprise! This magic moment brought to you by Prell shampoo. Prell: It gives a girl's hair that radiantly alive look!
(H/T to Popehat.)
Edited to add:
Divemedic notes in comments that the Japanese have never apologized nor made reparations for their savagery at Nanking and numerous other places, but that fact is irrelevant to the point of this post.
As anybody's momma could tell you, that the Japanese behaved as animals during WWII does not excuse a lack of manners by an American TV show. I've got no problem nuking people to cinders in their beds, but using it to sell nail polish and embarrass an innocent man of the cloth on TV is just damned trashy and no-count.
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14 comments:
Wow. I vaguely remember that show, but I'm happy to say I never saw that episode.
So reality shows really haven't improved over 50+ years, huh?
"Television's Golden Age." Oh, yeah.
VW: "neducker." Wrong, Slim. They bow.
I wonder why the Japanese have not ever issued a check or an apology to the 200,000 civilians killed in Nanking.
Back in the days of radio most programs came by "transcription," on 16" phonograph records. But the local crew often had to read the commercials.
One of a competitors announcers must have been a bit sleepy when she brightly announced "Remember girls, Prell puts hair on your body."
She made Kermit Schaffer's "Bloopers," and I doubt she ever lived it down. But Pills at the drug store claimed half the beardless boys in town rushed in to buy a bottle of "that soap that grows hair."
Stranger
Divemedic,
I fail to see what that has to do with the topic at hand.
As anybody's momma could tell you, that the Japanese behaved as animals during WWII does not excuse a lack of manners by an American TV show. I've got no problem nuking people to cinders in their beds, but using it to sell nail polish and embarrass an innocent man of the cloth on TV is just goddam trashy and no-count.
Ah, Prell. They couldn't sell it as floor wax so they sold it as shampoo instead.
Tam:
+100 on your @11:09.
cap'n chumbucket
"tv is just damned trashy and no-count"
You can erase the rest of the post, really, but that sentence.
$55,000 bought a lot of plastic surgery in 1955. The commercialization is crass, but it's how the system worked at the time.
Still creepy as all get out, though.
Tam, you remind me of W.F. Buckley, Jr. He once said that he could understand the necessity of executing a man, but never of hurting his feelings.
My late Father a veteran of new Guinea, liberation of the Phillipines and ocupation of Japan. Considering the after action reports of various campains he was in that included remarks like "Most intense hand to hand combat thus far in the war." Dad did not exhibit any animosity toward the women and children of Japan as far as I ever
knew. He was near one of the bomb sites and spoke with survivors, seeing there burns. I will accept his assesment. "It was awfull."
"I wonder why the Japanese have not ever issued a check or an apology to the 200,000 civilians killed in Nanking"
They'd have to _officially_ admit it 1st, and lose face.
Case closed.
I actually met and shook hands with the Reverend Mr. Tanimoto. The Atlanta Friends Meeting had him give a talk a few years back, in the late '70s, I think it was. He gave credit to moxibustion for mitigating the effects of his dose of rads.
Well, you see...the American Journalists will never be happy until they rise to the level exhibited by their English Peers o'the Press.
And turds float on the surface of cesspool, too.
The Majoritorian Left of Modern America's so-called reporting, journalism, & editorials have shed any pretense of objectivity. Now The Tutors to the Masses, follow The Best of National Enquirer guidelines as a new Standard of Excellence.
We'll catch up to the English in all manner of Social Welfare, Public Safety, and Making the world Safe for Civil Mediocrity -- and surpass them right to the last page of "A Clockwork Orange
Pixx on the lot'o those dewy-eyed do-gooders. I hope a rabid chipmunk bites them, at a PETA rally..
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