The 1960s brought the apotheosis of a lot of cultural oddities that will never again see the light of day. One such phenomenon was "Up With People," some kind of song-and-dance troupe that sprang from the Moral Re-Armament movement's ineffective actions in pre-war Europe. I would like to initiate a counterpart gypsy troupe that captures today's zeitgeist. I'll call it "Down With People."
The inspiration for encouraging people to feel bad about themselves is the stupidity I've been witnessing lately in our society. People are greedier and needier than ever and they're too dumb to realize it. A temporary EBT payment glitch encouraged bottom-feeding ghetto denizens to ransack a Wal-Mart. They are too lazy to work for a living and would rather steal food. Down with those people. Middle-class Americans signing up for mandatory health insurance are learning its true costs. Entitlement addicts never figured that the whole boondoggle was a swindle to redistribute wealth and protect health sector oligopolies. Down with those people. JPMorgan's fine has cleared the way for other incorrigible bankers to be smacked. Overpaid preppies snort a few white lines and lose billions while bailout moral hazards support their bad behavior. Down with those people.
Watching vacuous morons pump themselves up is one of my favorite pastimes. I'll enjoy it even more when they're on the way down thanks to my Down With People demotivating campaign. My first recruits for the performing troupe will be found among "life coaches," those sappy performers who already have some polished song-and-dance routines. It's fun to watch an audience of suckers listen to these maudlin carny barkers. Life coaches all have thin resumes, sympathetic stories of recovery from some unspecified crash, and outgoing personalities. Their target suckers are a lot like Oprah's audiences of emotionally needy fools sharing feelings and seeking validation. They'll get all the validation they crave and then some once they see themselves parodied in a Down With People troubadour review.
My Down With People project bears one similarity to Up With People. The UWP movement flourished under corporate sponsorship. Big companies funded UWP as a cleaned-up brand to compete for cultural dominance with smelly radicals in hippie communes. Thankfully, the hippies lost the culture war (with a little help from COINTELPRO) and UWP continued to dumb down consumers at Super Bowl halftime shows for years. My DWP project will also be corporate-sponsored . . . with Alfidi Capital as the sole sponsor. I don't want anyone else getting credit for this one.
I have yet to write the song lyrics, design set pieces, or audition cast members for my Down with People extravaganza. I may never get around to it at all. It's enough that I've identified a clear market need for a corrective tonic that will counteract 'Murican culture's self-esteem meme. Postmodern performance art is best realized as an authentic presentation of self. My authentic self is the persona of a rude, obnoxious, know-it-all. Yay me! Down with everyone else. Up with Tony Alfidi.
The inspiration for encouraging people to feel bad about themselves is the stupidity I've been witnessing lately in our society. People are greedier and needier than ever and they're too dumb to realize it. A temporary EBT payment glitch encouraged bottom-feeding ghetto denizens to ransack a Wal-Mart. They are too lazy to work for a living and would rather steal food. Down with those people. Middle-class Americans signing up for mandatory health insurance are learning its true costs. Entitlement addicts never figured that the whole boondoggle was a swindle to redistribute wealth and protect health sector oligopolies. Down with those people. JPMorgan's fine has cleared the way for other incorrigible bankers to be smacked. Overpaid preppies snort a few white lines and lose billions while bailout moral hazards support their bad behavior. Down with those people.
Watching vacuous morons pump themselves up is one of my favorite pastimes. I'll enjoy it even more when they're on the way down thanks to my Down With People demotivating campaign. My first recruits for the performing troupe will be found among "life coaches," those sappy performers who already have some polished song-and-dance routines. It's fun to watch an audience of suckers listen to these maudlin carny barkers. Life coaches all have thin resumes, sympathetic stories of recovery from some unspecified crash, and outgoing personalities. Their target suckers are a lot like Oprah's audiences of emotionally needy fools sharing feelings and seeking validation. They'll get all the validation they crave and then some once they see themselves parodied in a Down With People troubadour review.
My Down With People project bears one similarity to Up With People. The UWP movement flourished under corporate sponsorship. Big companies funded UWP as a cleaned-up brand to compete for cultural dominance with smelly radicals in hippie communes. Thankfully, the hippies lost the culture war (with a little help from COINTELPRO) and UWP continued to dumb down consumers at Super Bowl halftime shows for years. My DWP project will also be corporate-sponsored . . . with Alfidi Capital as the sole sponsor. I don't want anyone else getting credit for this one.
I have yet to write the song lyrics, design set pieces, or audition cast members for my Down with People extravaganza. I may never get around to it at all. It's enough that I've identified a clear market need for a corrective tonic that will counteract 'Murican culture's self-esteem meme. Postmodern performance art is best realized as an authentic presentation of self. My authentic self is the persona of a rude, obnoxious, know-it-all. Yay me! Down with everyone else. Up with Tony Alfidi.
