232 - The Earth Day Special

Jen and Tim look back at an all-star polemic from 1990, The Earth Day Special, a plea on behalf of Mother Earth that made a powerful impression on a young Tim. Also, we better not catch you pouring any old house paint down the drain.Watch the special at the Internet Archive (and if so inclined, maybe throw them a small donation for collecting all that health data recently purged from US government websites).According to this recap from Living Life Fearless, soap actor and Teen Witch (1989) star Dan Gauthier played Bachelor #2 in the Dating Game segment. He is apparently uncredited in the special.Anarchist publication The Fifth Estate provides a leftist perspective on The Earth Day Special in a contemporaneous review, and they ain't wrong:But the same powers of manipulation continue to function: the chemical manufacturers will plant some trees, and even the “forest products” magnates will, as they generally do, plant some trees. George Bush has called for the planting of a billion trees—but none of the rulers or their allies mention the possibility of refraining from cutting a billion trees (in particular, say the last few remnants of old growth forests, but also anywhere where woods are coming under the developers’ blades). These forces, these institutions are concealing their grisly daily business with a multimedia extravaganza, a spectacle that converts a natural love of what is alive into a pointless civic ritual.Market Realist has an easily digestible rundown on who actually founded Tesla and who merely came on board shortly afterward to leech off other people's work and push the founders out of the nest like a shitty South African cuckoo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.