Society's Child
President Joe Biden's presidential inaugural committee is marking his first year in office by blasting out an ad featuring Academy Award winner Tom Hanks. It was paid for with millions in leftover inaugural funds, according to a Thursday report from Axios.
In a statement to the outlet, the inaugural committee said it felt it was important to "celebrate the strength and perseverance of the American people" one year into Biden's presidency.
The ad, which is being broadcast on television throughout the day, features a handful of Americans speaking positively about the last year, including Sarah Lindsay, the first person to get the Covid-19 vaccine in the US.
"I can feel the change," Lindsay says.
Hanks' involvement, however, earned plenty of mockery and scorn as some recognized it as a 'Simpsons' moment "in real life," referencing Hanks' cameo in 2007's 'The Simpsons Movie.' Hanks appears as himself in the cartoon and uses his charm as a star to make an informational video telling the characters their hometown will soon be destroyed by the government. Some even referenced Hanks' opening line from the movie.
"Hello, I'm Tom Hanks. The US government has lost its credibility, so it's borrowing some of mine."
"You know he's in trouble when he's rolling out Tom Hanks," the Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro tweeted in reaction.
Hanks himself claims in the video that the economy is "getting better," exclaiming that businesses are reopening and jobs are being created as we move into "year three of the pandemic none of us wanted."
"We are stronger than we were a year ago today," says Hanks, who also participated in inauguration celebrations for Biden last year.
Biden agrees with the actor when he appears in the video. While the president is facing cratering poll numbers amid multiple crises, including the pandemic, he still claims that he's "never been more optimistic about America's future."
Reader Comments
But I have a lot of stolen property, ie., that which belongs to others but that I obtained through good acting and scrupulous 'editing' (very selective, high quality--violence).
No, they should have gone with Clint Eastwood.
Actually though, it doesn't matter, any well paid actor will do.
And they do do.
Dodo?
Dumdum.
Singsing.
We live in a circus, but one day, that circus will end.
All the performers will lose their money, their feigned control over others and they will lose their lives.
And it will be a long time.
A very long time.
-OUT-
I should have added well oiled and well greased.
In addition to well paid (bribed).
Did you know that squeaky wheels slow down the train?
And prevent it from smashing into the mountain?
Which we're all destined to do.
You can't stop a train.
You smash the mountain!
Again and again.
And again.
Such romance.
Such credit.
ned,
out
The episode of the Odyssey that is most linked to themes dear to the oral popular tradition is certainly Odysseus' deception of the Cyclops Polyphemus. In tradition, the hero finds himself prisoner of an ogre with only one eye, cannibal and who lives alone with his flock. However, the hero manages to blind him and escape from the cave where he is kept segregated with his fellow adventurers by dressing in sheepskin or hiding under an animal while it comes out of the cave: the story of the Cyclops is found in Od. IX, 180 - 535 (1-2-3-4). This theme is later attested - but was developed independently - in the tale of Sindbad the sailor, during his third voyage by sea, contained in the collection The Thousand and One Nights, dated approximately between the eighth and tenth centuries, that is about 1500 years after the composition of the Odyssey.
Regarding the episode of Polyphemus, particularly interesting was the study of the well-known fabulist W. Grimm, who proposed in 1857 (Die Sage von Polyfem) a comparison between the Homeric tale and the different variants of the same attested in different eras and cultures: Grimm noted that the versions subsequent to the Odyssey did not contain either the episode of the intoxication of the ogre (Od. IX, 195-374), or that of the deception of the name (Od. IX, 364-370) and concluded that the latter they must have had an independent genesis and were not directly descended from the Odyssey. He therefore postulated an original nucleus for the episode, an Urmythus, from which Homer too had drawn, then introducing original elements. Grimm also proposed an interpretation for this original myth, this "archetypal form of the human mind", which was found unchanged in different cultures thanks to an "affinity of forms and categories of thought". The eye, in Grimm's opinion, constituted the eye of the world, that is, the sun, from which it appeared that the blinded ogre represented the devil. The struggle between the hero and the giant therefore symbolized the diathesis brute force against cunning, or even forces of Nature against inner strength. However, Grimm's interpretation does not constitute a definitive and universally accepted answer, although it allows for a wide-ranging overview of the sacred and religious roots of this very ancient myth.
As for the original moments of the Homeric tale of the fight with the Cyclops, it should first of all be noted that neither of the two, neither the drunkenness with Ismaro's wine, nor the deception of the name, is strictly essential for the story to unfold completely. : they are both "superfluous" episodes, probably taken from different popular traditions, independent of the myth of the blinded ogre.
The deception of the name, for example, is attested in a type of story in which a hero fights with a devil, who in the end is deceived because the man had told him to call himself "I myself": when the companions of the devil come to his aid by asking him who is the cause of his evils, the devil replies "myself", so that they abandon him. This same theme is also found in the Bible, in Genesis (Gen. 32.25), where Jacob wrestles with an angel.
The theme of intoxication, then, is common to a huge number of folk tales, where the protagonist serves his enemy a drink to extort information from him or to force him to perform some particular gesture under the influence of the powerful drink.
Glad someone doesn't think I'm being over the top. I mean, it's true, many of these things don't happen by accident.
Makes sense he would be used for a propaganda ad, hollywood is a cesspool after all.
Comment: Maybe they should have gone with Morgan Freeman.
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