Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Happy Friday!




Happy National Tootsie Roll Day! During the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in 1950, U.S. Marines called for more "Tootsie Rolls" which was the code for 60mm mortar ammo. A radio operator was unfamiliar with the code, so the Marines instead received a large airdrop of the chewy candy.


However, the Marines welcomed the Tootsie Rolls because the candy provided a much-need energy boost. They also found that Tootsie Rolls were useful for plugging bullet holes in their equipment.

Cary Stewart, a 92-year-old Korean War Veteran and Marine is among the “Chosin” few who have been receiving big packages of Tootsie Rolls for several years now.


Feb 23, 1945: U.S. Marines raised the flag atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima. The iconic photo of the event taken by Joe Rosenthal has become one of the most reproduced and parodied images in history.


Just a few. I think the Navy collected them all.


Broadcast on Feb 23, 1971: The Emmy Award-winning CBS Reports: The Selling of the Pentagon with Roger Mudd. "What is perhaps the Pentagon's most ambitious film..."RED NIGHTMARE (1962) received its biggest audience when CBS ran its news special "The Selling of the Pentagon" in 1971. See how the clips are used at about the 27:28 mark:






Frank Nicholas Stanton (March 20, 1908 – December 24, 2006) was an American broadcasting executive who served as the president of CBS between 1946 and 1971 and then as vice chairman until 1973. He also served as the chairman of the Rand Corporation from 1961 until 1967.

The philanthropic Stanton Foundation was created upon his death. "The grant allows the ARL of Boston to develop the first-in-the-nation Center for Shelter Dogs." The Animal Rescue League of Boston

On October 5, 2011 the Stanton Foundation awarded the Wikimedia Foundation $3.6 million, the foundation's largest-ever grant. The Frank Stanton Veterinary Spectrum of Care Clinic at the Ohio State University was named in his honor when it opened in spring 2021.

As president of CBS, Stanton's greatest battle with the government occurred in 1971, and focused on just this parallel to print press rights. The controversy surrounded "The Selling of the Pentagon," a CBS Reports documentary, which exposed the huge expenditure of public funds, partly illegal, to promote militarism. The confrontation raised the issue of whether television news programming deserved protection under the First Amendment.

The program came under intense criticism from two men who appeared on the program, from the House of Representatives, other media and some prominent politicians. Daniel Henkins, Undersecretary of Defense for Public Relations, charged that statements from his interview with Roger Mudd about his work had been doctored, as did Col. John MacNeil, who accused CBS of rearranging his comments in a speech he gave about the situation in Southeast Asia. The Investigations Subcommittee of the House Commerce Committee subpoenaed CBS's outtakes to determine whether or not distortion had taken place.

Meanwhile, critics at the Washington Post and Time magazine, while not taking issue with the thesis of "Selling" that the Pentagon was engaging in propaganda, objected to the editing techniques employed in its production. The program was also criticized by Vice President Spiro Agnew and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird.

Against threat of jail, Stanton refused the subpoena from the House Commerce Committee ordering him to provide copies of the outtakes and scripts from the documentary. He claimed that such materials are protected by the freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment. Stanton observed that if such subpoena actions were allowed, there would be a "chilling effect" upon broadcast journalism.

For his efforts in that situation, Stanton was awarded one of three personal Peabody Awards (the others coming in 1959 and 1960). He also shared two other Peabodys that were awarded to CBS as a network.

Source down below, this is from Chapt 10, pg 87-88:

In an early stage of researching the documentary, Peter, or one of his associates, found vivid confirmation of the view that the Pentagon had been engaged in public relations activities for along time. They found an article in the New York Times quoting Democratic congressman F. Edward Hebert from Louisiana:

It is about time the American public be informed as to the identity of individuals and what it costs the taxpayers to maintain and support this gigantic and colossal propaganda machine on the banks of the Potomac.
...Since the exposé of waste in the military and its effect on the taxpayers' pocketbook has been so vividly brought to the attention of the American people by the committee I head, all the faucets have been turned on by the Pentagon propagandists, alibi artists, and apologists.

The date of this statement was February 26, 1952. The reference to the "gigantic and colossal propaganda machine" and to the "exposé" was not to our "The Selling of the Pentagon," of course, because it was not broadcast until nineteen years later. Rather, it was in reference to the results of an investigation by the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Waste. Congressman Hebert was the chairman of that subcommittee.

Ironically, two decades later, it was this same Congressman Hebert who filed afairness complaint with the FCC against "The Selling of the Pentagon" ; the same Congressman Hebert who condemned CBS News and the documentary as "un-American" and "Goebbels-like"; and the same Congressman Hebert who was so instrumental in persuading the Investigations Subcommittee of the House Commerce Committee to undertake its investigation of CBS in the spring of 1971.

After about ayear of research, filming, and editing, "The Selling of the Pentagon" was first broadcast on February 23, 1971. It focused on the Pentagon's public relations efforts, which ranged from distributing propaganda movies to holding military demonstrations around the country. As is usual with television documentaries, relatively few viewers (only several million) watched the initial broadcast.

The New York Times reviewer and many other television critics praised the broadcast. (It was given all the major awards that year.) But others criticized it—including Congressman Hebert, Vice President Agnew, and Melvin Laird, the secretary of defense. CBS News, in its regular news broadcasts, reported these criticisms.

The controversy it engendered was so great that we decided to re-broadcast it amonth later. This time, the audience was half again as large as it was for the first broadcast. At the end of the second broadcast, we included atwenty-two-minute addendum, which included statements by some of the documentary's main critics, and a five-minute reply by me. In it I said:

No one has refuted the essential accuracy of "The Selling of the Pentagon." You have seen and you have heard Pentagon activities for yourselves: the manipulation of news, the staging of events, and the selling of the Pentagon's points of view. None of our critics has said that these things didn't happen or weren't done—and so the validity of the broadcast stands unscathed.

Source: Salant, CBS, And The Battle For The Soul Of Broadcast Journalism: The Memoirs Of Richard S. Salant (1999); pages 6, 29, Chpt 10 pg 86.
PDF copy at World Radio History.





In 1985, in the dark ages before the Internet and YouTube, Rhino Records video division introduced RED NIGHTMARE (1962) to the VHS generation as "THE COMMIES ARE COMING! THE COMMIES ARE COMING!" Red Nightmare is the best-known title of the 1962 Armed Forces Information Film (AFIF) 120, Freedom and You. Made for the Department of Defense, the short film was produced to mold public opinion against communism. The film was later released to American television and as an educational film to American schools under the Red Nightmare title. 



Cover art by American cartoonist and illustrator, Drew Friedman.


That time of year again...


BBC Classified Balloon Propaganda Projects


Netflix has released the trailer for ARA San Juan: The Submarine that Disappeared. Premiering March 7th, the 8-part investigative docuseries explores the controversy surrounding the 2017 loss of the Argentine TR-1700-class sub.




From 1980 to 1987 Noriyoshi Ohrai painted a series of women from myths & legends for the cover of SF Adventure magazine, here's one:


We are governed by Maritime Admiralty Law more so than most people realize. Hostis humani generis (Latin for "Enemy of the human race" or "enemy of mankind") is a legal term of spell art that originates in Admiralty Law.

Think Dutch / British East Indies Co., Star Trek, Navy, Space Force...the battle for control of commercial trade routes that keeps the 'machine' running on petro dollars or will it become the BRICS alliance.?