Steven Michael Kudelko

I haven’t written online in quite a while.  I’ve also never written online about anything remotely involving politics, current events, or controversial elements of pop culture.  I hesitate to do so for very many reasons.  I fear becoming the idiot young adult who goes around telling everyone they see how Palin and Putin are similar sounding names and that proves that 9/11 was an inside job and Obama is secretly a communist.  I don’t ever want to become that fucking stupid.  I read a lot of blogs from friends and people who used to be my friends, or people who used to be my girlfriend, and the complete disregard for intelligent argument and realistic perspective completely blows my mind.  It fills me with a stomach sickness similar to the feeling you get when you find out the restaurant you ate at three weeks ago has just been closed down for serving rotten food.

I’ve remained quiet because I admit I am not informed enough to write 300-paragraph essay about income equality, or healthcare reform.  I recognize that I don’t know everything there is to know about these things, and also that I don’t know enough to be well informed.  That’s the key.  Protest, free speech, petition, rebellion… those are all fantastic, but if the core of those arguments is incorrect, or non existent, then they will never be taken seriously.  I am 100% in support of the 99% movement, but the exponential rise of similar movements across the country makes me fear that spur of the moment, hastily organized protests could result in a “boy who cried wolf” appearance.

Despite the cringe-worthy moments where I watch a news clip of some bearded idiot spouting clearly uninformed dogma, and the unfair propaganda delivered to Fox News viewers that leads people to the conclusion that “Occupy Wall Street” is a bunch of uneducated, bitter, lazy people, I am incredibly excited for the possibilities the future of these movements bring.  Humanity, human rights, decency, and fairness is the heart of these movements, and that is something I can relate to and write about.

When I see police in riot gear beating the shit out of protesters at the request of a mayor whose name is synonymous with Wall Street, it blows my fucking mind.  These are public employees, every day people, with average salaries, average families, and average looking daughters.  They work hard, they’ve been wronged.  They are the fucking 99%!!!  So to be unleashed like dogs whenever their boss in a tailored suit demands, crossing the line, destroying property, purposely breaking things like tents, sleeping bags, canteens, and other things that are critical to survival, it makes me realize just how sad things are in America.  We are beyond the point of wealth inequality.  We are beyond high poverty, high unemployment, and high homelessness.  We are a country that has lost the fundamental decency, compassion, and common sense that is crucial for a healthy and prosperous society.

This isn’t a dictatorship.  The police are public employees.  The injustice they face every day, the moment they step out of their uniform and step into their homes, is being challenged, and highlighted, and crusaded against by the very people they’ve beaten and displaced and assaulted.  They aren’t Waffen-SS paramilitary troops that are bound by oath to attack and silence any dissenters.  Mayor Bloomberg isn’t Adolf fucking Hitler.  But things certainly seem that way.  And yet, the very people who were beaten and hurt and silenced come back even stronger, every single time, and continue to fight for all Americans, even police.

How can someone intentionally hurt their economic doppelganger?  How can someone living paycheck to paycheck, supporting their family, working long hours standing on tired feet take orders from someone much better off than they are that involve using violence to stop someone from standing up for those living paycheck to paycheck, supporting their families, and working long hours standing on tired feet?

That very question hurts my brain tonight.  Human decency shouldn’t be political.  Right and wrong, fairness, love, compassion, support, and community should not be for sale.  Republicans, Democrats, wealthy, poor, middle class, average, ugly, beautiful, thin, fat, black, white, citizen, immigrant, tourist, manager, banker, teacher, police, cashier, Walmart greeter… every single person, profession, and political party should be bound together to make the coming changes, revolutions and elections as peaceful and universally prosperous as possible.  Until that idea is the largest movement in this country, nothing will ever change.

Earlier I posted a video of the only ad I’ve ever liked from McDonalds.  And, if you follow me on the Internet or are one of my friends or people who I talk to daily, you’ll know that I think McDonalds advertising department is the worst in the world.  Their commercials make absolutely no sense.  They try to hard to target minorities and act like they’re cool that they become ridiculously cliche…. or, as they’d like to think, “down with that.”  Get it… that itself is lame and cliche?  Whatever.

I liked this ad because it wasn’t stupid.  It wasn’t obnoxious.  It wasn’t three black people sitting in a white Cadillac Brougham with purple interior and fuzzy dice hanging off the rearview mirror, bouncing up and down thanks to the hydraulics in the car, saying “yo, gimme dat nugget.”  It wasn’t an obnoxious stereotype… a pathetic attempt at McDonalds to fit in with what was cool 15 years ago.  This ad was warm, welcoming, relaxing.  It was simple.  The message is that McDonalds likes you no matter who you are.  McDonalds is for everyone.  This is unlike every other recent McDonalds ad campaign which says “you’re only welcome at McDonalds if you’re black, and we’ll hire you if you’re Mexican because we need a certain amount of Mexicans and Asians for our ads to meet a quota, you can only order a McFlurry if you like Justin Timberlake, and everyone that orders McDonalds breakfast is a scumbag that think French is as easy as adding ‘le’ in front of every word you say.”

This ad made me feel like McDonalds was a happy, welcoming, nice place.  It appealed to me emotionally.  I was looking around the internet, reading comments that others made about the ad, and I came across Bill O’Reilly.  This dick fuck, of course, had something bad to say about the ad…. naturally because it was French, and it included homosexuality.  Although, instead of coming out and saying that, he tried to appear logical by asking a Republican cunt if the ad made her hungry.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/03/bill-oreilly-compares-gay_n_599311.html

I wonder if any other McDonalds ad has ever made him hungry.  Is that really their goal?  If so, McDonalds advertising is more of a failure than I first thought.  I thought the point was just to get people to think about, to remember McDonalds.  Do tampon commercials make your vagina start to bleed?  I don’t think so.  The republicunt didn’t really have an answer.  However, Bill’s question did intrigue me.  I really gave a lot of thought as to whether the point of McDonalds’ advertising should be to make people feel hungry, or to just make people feel emotionally attached to McDonalds.  I decided on the second one, although either one would be an improvement from just blasting me in the face with stereotypes and enough minorities to meet the quota necessary for equal rights activists to shut the fuck up.

I personally think McDonalds hit a home run with this ad, but it was clearly by accident.  What I took away from the ad… McDonalds is a place that welcomes everyone…. isn’t the message they intended to say.  Instead, homosexuality in France is the equivalent of being black in the United States, for McDonalds, that is.  This is what a representative of the company was quoted as saying about the ad:

“We wanted to take a look at how French society is today.  We’re very comfortable with the topic of homosexuality.  There is obviously no problem with homosexuality in France today.”

What the fuck, dude?  How is that at all relevant to fast food?  How the fuck is it McDonalds’ place to discuss homosexuality and its impact on society?  You guys sell hamburgers to people who are in a hurry.  That’s it.  You overestimate your importance, and it’s really fucking obnoxious.  The absolute stupidity of McDonalds ad department makes me swear uncontrollably and bash my head against the wall, because I’m so upset that I am apparently the only person in the world that is so dumbfounded by their commercials, offended by their use of asians and black people all over the packaging for their foods, and their obnoxious not-cute-at-all sayings and phrases and jingles that don’t make any sense.  ”I’m lovin’ it” is a stupid slogan.  Good for you, McDonalds.  It’s great that you’re lovin’ it… but how about making sure everyone else is.  Idiots.

Bill O’Reilly and the republicunt discussed the ad some more about the grand theme of the ad campaign, which this individual commercial is just a piece of.  The theme is “come as you are” and I believe that touches on the fact that everyone, no matter who they are, what they believe in, where they live or how they were raised, are worth something and entitled to feel welcome at a McDonalds restaurant.  Why the ad rep couldn’t have said that, instead of some idiotic quote about how French society doesn’t have a problem with homosexuality is beyond me.  It could be that that quote was taken out of context, and the statement was actual a defense against a republicunt attack against why this commercial had a gay man in it, instead of just someone who’s sexuality was undefined or left up to the viewer to decide.  That would have made more sense.

At the end of the video clip from Bill O’Reilly’s sermon rhetoric infomercial for Republicans television show, he asks “Do they have one for Al Queda?”  This was just a stupid comment from an asshole who thinks he’s funny and says things that he thinks are outrageous but really are just insignificant.  Instantly, everyone on the Internet is now saying that Bill O’Reilly was comparing gay people to Al Queda (which is the point that the article I linked to was trying to make).  Was he?  I don’t think so.  If he was, he’s stupid.  Don’t listen to him.  But I think he was just saying a “trigger word” or something that is taboo…. a word that makes the American people do the equivalent of a dog’s ears popping up when they hear a high-pitched noise, or another dog barking, or breaks squealing in your driveway at night when no more visitors should be arriving.  He said “Al Queda” because, no matter what the topic was, no matter what group of people he would have been talking about first, “Al Queda” is a phrase that Americans are uncomfortable or angry about.  It gets a reaction out of them no matter what.

My point is this:  This commercial was a great one because it made the viewer become emotionally attached to the brand, regardless of whether it made them hungry for food.  McDonalds is an arrogant delusional corporation that has shitty advertising and thinks they are doing everyone a favor by adopting stereotypes and being so edgy by including something that certain people have an issue with in their ads.  Maybe the next commercial will show a woman who is wearing a mini skirt instead of a dress, and the ad rep will let everyone know that “in today’s society, no one has a problem if you can see above a woman’s knees.”  And, Bill O’Reilly is a fucking dick who just likes to push people’s buttons to get attention.