As IF Times

In 1967, A company named Star-Kist was marketing canned tuna using a cartoon tuna fish named Charlie, with haughty pretentions to elevated cultural tastes.  Charlie aspired to be accepted into the Star-Kist brand.  However, his tuna colleague told him: “Sorry Charlie, Star-Kist doesn’t want tuna with good taste, they want tuna that tastes good”.

American Eagle should steal this sentiment during their present jean marketing campaign with Sydney Sweeney. As most know, Sweeney’s installation as the new poster gal for American Eagle has sparked another manufactured outrage in the perpetually offended community by daring to invoke an attractive blue eyed blonde girl as their brand representative.  Apparently, this has Nazi connotations.  Of course, it doesn’t help that her initials are SS.

As we know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but over the past 10 years, we have been coerced to not believe our own lyin’ eyes but rather to defer to those with more refined sensibilities to tell us what beauty is. Thus, the standard of beauty in women was a matter of ticking the boxes of socially acceptable traits rather than of being a spontaneous visceral response.  It was a pretty audacious marketing excercise, to make ugly the new norm of beauty.

Thus, there were gigantic billboards in New York City with even more gigantic models advertising lingerie as if to convince people that blob was the new chic. Even Victoria’s Secret, the lingerie brand known for their comely models began to have ads that could have been created by National Wildebeest. Clearly these companies are unclear as to their target audience.  Some advice for women out there:  men prefer whoopee the verb; not the noun.

But it’s not just physical beauty. The gas lighting of the public extends into virtually all domains of modern life.  Kamala Harris was presented as a keen intellectual and her word salad speeches were exalted as brilliant rhetoric. Before her, Barack Obama’s speeches were considered stuff to be put on stone tablets. The screeching bile from the hosts of The View and the recently terminated Colbert Show was lauded as high wit.

The natural appreciation of beauty in all forms is of course a subjective thing.  Only the very weak minded can be convinced that what they observe and which resonates at an animal level is not acceptable…that they need validation of their own senses. Women are their own worst enemies. Even in such obvious cases as beauty contests, they allow transgender males to compete and in at least one case, win.  Thus, men are better at being women….than women? The art world has been enormously effective at this for generations. The unwashed are convinced to believe that appreciation of high art is synonymous with high intelligence when really, it’s massive gas-lighting for the weak minded.  A glaring example of this were two ‘works of art’ which hung in Canada’s national gallery in 1962. Here’s how the media describes one of them, entitled No.1, White and Red:

“….A famous red and white painting displayed in a Canadian museum is No. 1, White and Red by Mark Rothko. This artwork, created in 1962, is part of the collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The painting measures 259.1 x 228.6 cm and is noted for its use of color and light, which has been described as transcendent and capable of transporting viewers into another space…”

To be clear, it was literally a red and white stripe on a canvas. Not to be outdone another two color piece was also acclaimed as being high art:

“…Another notable red and white painting is Voice of Fire by Barnett Newman, which is displayed at the National Gallery of Canada. This large-scale acrylic on canvas painting, measuring 540 cm × 240 cm, was commissioned for Expo 67 and has been valued at over $40 million. While Voice of Fire is not strictly red and white, it is a significant work of art in Canada…”

This piece was breathtakingly daring in its use of blue and red instead of just white and red. Clearly if you didn’t appreciate the brilliant nuances of these bi-chromatic works, you were less evolved.

As stated earlier, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and there’s a lid for every pot.  It becomes preposterous only when people are convinced that their own sense of what’s attractive should be supplanted by the flawed choices of others and are thus normalized.  Don’t be Charlie.

link: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-justice-department-scrambles-defend-its-about-face-release-epstein-files-2025-07-08/

One of the hallmarks of American culture is the notion of the ‘conspiracy theory’. At every decade since the early sixties, there have been numerous events, often tragic, but not always, that have an official narrative, but whose facts didn’t stand up to intense scrutiny. People, especially Americans like to question things.  Not everyone will be satisfied the ‘official narrative’.

In fact, according to some theorists, the very moniker ‘conspiracy theory’ was coined by a member of the CIA in addressing the skeptics of the events surrounding assassination of JFK in 1963. Those of us alive at the time remember vividly the chaos and events of that day in Dallas, but just as significant were the unknowns as to who was responsible for his death. Sure, Lee Harvey Oswald was convicted of the shooting, but then from various quarters came the suspicion of the involvement of others, giving rise to the ‘grassy knoll’ and other theories of what really happened.  What gave credence to alternative views of the official narrative was that the JFK files were sealed until just recently.  Someone kills the leader of the most powerful nation in the world and they want to seal the facts for 75 years?  Sounds logical.

Another popular event with lots of controversy was the famous Moon landing in 1969. The official narrative is pretty much there for everyone to see since the networks all carried the event live ‘as it happened’.  Until recently, no one doubted this ‘greatest step for mankind’.  Now, with the aid of technology and some sober reflection of the events and technologies, the veracity of the event has come under great suspicion. The official footage of the event looks like very bad AI renderings today. The official narratives and the review of available technology at the time have fed into a growing pool of skepticism.

We all remember the events in New York in September of 2001.  The nation witnessed in real time the destruction of the two World Trade Center towers that day as 2 planes crashed into them.  There was little reason to question the official narrative; we all saw it. Except that while 2 planes crashed into 2 buildings, a third building, the Salomon Brothers tower 7, also collapsed spontaneously. As the years progressed, many professional engineers have cast doubt that aircraft alone would have caused the buildings to essentially implode, much less spontaneously.  But they’re sticking to the official narrative: 2 planes, 3 buildings, a virtual 7-10 split in bowling.

In 2020, a global pandemic emergency was declared in which a deadly virus was loosed upon the world that was so dangerous, that one of the symptoms was that there were no symptoms.  Masks became mandatory, sequestration was enforced upon the public and mandatory vaccinations were imposed on entire populations, except politicians. The official narrative was that only a 14 day containment was necessary and the virus would be contained.  They were only off by 3 years as the segregation and confinement became part of daily life.  One vaccination became two, then three, then a series of boosters to make sure. Common sense and rational thinking disappeared faster than crab legs at a cruise ship buffet. After almost 4 years, the charade could no longer be maintained and the edicts quietly died off.

Some may recall the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017. A man opened fire from his suite at the Mandalay Bay hotel onto a music festival below, killing 60 people and wounding over 400 others. He was later found in his room dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.   The motive for the shooting was officially undetermined.  The logistics of how this one man could have moved so much weaponry and ammo up 32 stories came into question and of course, gave rise to various conspiracy theories.

Not to be outdone, Jeffrey Epstein, a well-known wealthy party guy to the jet set and politically connected, was arrested in 2019, accused of being the mastermind of a massive global honey-pot operation involving sexual activity with young children, murder, spying and political intrigue.  His partner Ghislaine Maxwell was tried and convicted and received a 20 year sentence.  After his arrest, Epstein apparently committed suicide in his high security jail cell.  So said the official narrative.  Just a few days ago, after the most publicized outrage and promise of justice for the children by all chest beating politicos-in-charge, it turns out that Epstein had no client list and the case was closed.  Thus, Epstein must have un-alived himself out of hysteria. The conspiracy theories will write themselves on this one.