Why not start out this week with a link to one of our favorites, Alternet? Jay Walljasper’s recent article, Am I a Food Snob?, is comfortingly reminiscent of one of our past rants.

Now that the hype has died down a bit, I want to say a few words about the launch of Vanilla Coke on May 8.

First…It’s a new product, fine, no problem, you like it or don’t like it—you buy it or don’t buy it—end of story.

Second…However, I want to point out the excellent satirical piece that Comedy Central’s The Daily Show produced on May 13 (unfortunately there’s no link to the broadcast). In it, Jon Stewart and the show’s writers point out the fact that the beverage received extensive coverage on all three of the major networks’ morning shows. Wonder how much Coke paid for that little bit of untainted journalism? On one show—I think it was The Today Show—a senior brand manager from Coke was present representin’ the product. She said—this kills me, I mean she actually said this—that “Americans have spoken, and they have told us that they are looking for new, exciting ways to be refreshed.” You know, just the other day I was telling my wife that I needed to be refreshed. She told me to go refresh myself. I can’t believe we accept this kind of mindless crap! I can’t believe that hearing a corporate robot like that talk doesn’t make America want to throw its collective TV set out the window!

Third…On Metafilter (I check the site every once in a while just to make sure it still sucks as much as I think it does), there’s a thread about Vanilla Coke that begins “What's the verdict (besides anti-corporation rants)?” The person who posted this really wanted to make sure that nobody wasted bandwidth bashing the almighty Coke (please…no societal critique here…we all just want to be happy and enjoy our consumer products)! Following this intro are about 70 comments discussing the positives and negatives of the new sugar-water variation—everybody was very obedient. Is this representative of the average American’s frightening state of mental atrophy? I mean, my goodness, 70 comments of ass-licking, subservient discussion about a new Coke product! I’m going to be sick!

Thank you, I feel much better now.

And Ladiez, he's single! Come 'n get it!

-Michael Moore on his latest film, Bowling for Columbine.

And of course David Corn at Alternet has something to point out as well, and that is, the Bush crowd's fondness for secrecy. Thanks, John, for pointing out the Corn article.