Illinois: Where our Governors Make the License Plates

Here's a Way to Waste Time at Work!

So MOST of Dodge County is closed due to snow, but your boss bucks the curve and has you come in... looking for a way to waste some time until you can go home?

Check this game out! I love it!

http://www.games.com/game/bubble-town/

Thank you, Brenda!!!

Brenda from Mane Stage in Beaver Dam gave me a Christmas mix CD and it's AWESHUM!!!

:)


Thanks, Brenda!

A Vehicular Haiku

My car is deceased.
A paperweight in the lot.
Stupid Battery.


If you aren't snapping your fingers to the grooviness of it all, you don't have a pulse.)

If you missed the Morning Show today...

You missed us talking about cancellations!!! So much for all that show-prep. It may have been easier (and less time consuming) to talk about what is actually open in our listening area.

I certainly hope this is not an omen of worse things to come...

Stefani's Corner: Bringing Back Saturday Morning Cartoons

Jason Wilde (beat reporter from the Wisconsin State Journal) and I kicked off a new segment that will air every Thursday! It's "Stefani's Corner." Wilde and I debate a new topic every week.

Today's topic: Should we bring back the Saturday morning cartoons from our childhood for a new generation to enjoy. (***Jason and I had discussed the topic and chose positions three days before this debate. If you would like us to debate a topic, email me at sbishop@gkbradio.com***)

Here are my thoughts... enjoy!

I remember waking up at six-o-clock in the morning on Saturday with the excitement of a child on Christmas. I would Run in to the kitchen to grab a box of cereal and then make a b-line to the living room… it started with the wacky-mad-cap shenanigans of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, and ended in a triumphant spray of color, comedy, and Acme products courtesy of our friends at Warner Brother. Now when I turn on the TV on a Saturday morning I have my choice of golf, Reba, or Reba… that woman’s everywhere - but should we bring back the morning cartoons from my childhood for today’s generation to enjoy? No…

Children these days have it too good, with their complicated shoes, emo haircuts, and video game systems with more than 8-bit graphics.

They aren’t going to be satisfied with the 70’s style-thickly drawn lines of School House Rock… not unless the little girl singing about nouns and the conducter from Conjunction Junction happen to morph in to some Super Grammer Robot Karate Ranger Ninja that shoots punctuation marks out of it’s eyes. The Smurfs won’t be entertaining unless they are drawn Manga style with giant mouths and live in little pokemon balls. Scooby-Doo? Well, nobody liked Scooby Doo – and Scrappy Doo can just eat it… moving on.

This is the problem – if you bring back the classics from the 80’s, they won’t translate well and will have to be completely revamped to suit the jaded minds of today’s youth. Strawberry Shortcake will have to shout constantly like Dora the Explorer. Jem won’t seem outrageous, (truly, truly, truly outrageous) unless you can play along with her hokey songs ala Guitar Hero… (wait… Jem Guitar Hero… I’m copywriting that).

Didn’t they try to bring cartoons from the sixties and seventies back during the eighties?
The New Adventures of Jonny Quest (1986)
The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1988-90)
The New Archies (1987-88)
The New Scooby Doo Mysteries (1984-85)
New Scooby and Scrappy Doo Show (1984) – already mentioned what an abomination that was!

Yeah, let’s go ahead and bring the Gummie Bears back, only this time the Gummie Bears will drive Transformer-like cars and live in another dimension! Yeah! How about Heathcliff and the Cadillac Cats – if they produce new cartoons Heathcliff won’t live in a dump anymore – he’ll live at the Playboy Mansion... that will make it EDGIER!

Don’t even get me started on what the Thunder Cats would be like…

Some cartoons just shouldn’t be remade. They were great for their time, and are some of our most cherished memories. What we found funny and entertaining from our generation might not be what the new generation is looking for… Who knows, maybe in a few years, this generation will be reflecting fondly on their Saturday Mornings… I mean Reba is funny, and cute.

The Origin of the Pledge of Allegiance

...so Rick made me look up the origin of the Pledge of Allegiance, but we weren't able to get to it today. As promised, here's a blog containing all the facts I've dug up, so push some useful knowledge out of your head and make some room for this...

From the 'Lectric Law Library's stacks
The Strange Origin of the Pledge of Allegiance

By John W. Baer, professor of economics, Anne Arundel CommunityCollege.

Every class day over 60 million public and parochial school teachers andstudents in the US recite the Pledge of Allegiance along with thousandsof Americans at official meetings of the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Elks,Masons, American Legion, and others. During the televised bicentennialcelebration of the US Constitution for the school children on September17, 1987, the children as a group did not recite any part of theConstitution. However, President Reagan did lead the nation's schoolchildren in reciting the Pledge. Yet probably not one of them knows thehistory or original meaning of the Pledge. In the presidential campaign of 1988, George Bush successfully used thePledge in his campaign against Mike Dukakis. Ironically, Bush did notseem to know the words of the Pledge until his campaign manager told himto memorize it. The teachers and students in the New England privateschools he attended, Greenwich Country Day School and Phillips AndoverAcademy, did not recite the pledge. By contrast, Dukakis and his mother,a public school teacher, recited the Pledge in the public schools. YetBush criticized Dukakis for vetoing a bill in Massachusetts requiringpublic school teachers but not private school teachers to recite thePledge. Dukakis vetoed the bill on grounds that it violated theconstitutional right of free speech. [[Actually, the case Dukakis cited (and was subsequently attacked byBush for it) was a religious freedom case (!); see the file with thespeech by ACLU director Ira Glasser which, like this article, contains alot of information you don't hear much about in the mainstream press. Italso happens to be among the best speeches I've ever heard, anddemonstrates devastatingly what many of us already knew; what a bad jobDukakis did responding to Bush's attacks about being "liberal" and (Godforbid) and being a member of the ACLU. -- HB]] How did this Pledge of Allegiance to a flag replace the US Constitutionand Bill of Rights in the affections of many Americans? Among thenations in the world, only the USA and the Philippines, imitating theUSA, have a pledge to their flag. Who institutionalized the Pledge asthe cornerstone of American patriotic programs and indoctrination in thepublic and parochial schools? In 1892, a socialist named Francis Bellamy created the Pledge ofAllegiance for *Youth's* *Companion*, a national family magazine foryouth published in Boston. The magazine had the largest nationalcirculation of its day with a circulation around 500 thousand. Twoliberal businessmen, Daniel Ford and James Upham, his nephew, owned*Youth's* *Companion*. One hundred years ago the American flag was rarely seen in the classroomor in front of the school Upham changed that. In 1888, the magazinebegan a campaign to sell American flags to the public schools. By 1892,his magazine had sold American flags to about 26 thousands schools(1). In 1891, Upham had the idea of using the celebration of the 400thanniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America to promote theuse of the flag in the public schools. The same year, the magazine hiredDaniel Ford's radical young friend, Baptist minister, Nationalist, andChristian Socialist leader, Francis Bellamy, to help Upham in his publicrelations work. Bellamy was the first cousin of the famous Americansocialist, Edward Bellamy. Edward Bellamy's futuristic novel, *Looking**Backward*, published in 1888, described a utopian Boston in the year2000. The book spawned an elitist socialist movement in Boston known as"Nationalism," whose members wanted the federal government to nationalmost of the American economy. Francis Bellamy was a member of thismovement and a vice president of its auxiliary group, the Society ofChristian Socialists(2). He was a baptist minister and he lectured andpreached on the virtues of socialism and the evils of capitalism. Hegave a speech on "Jesus the Socialist" and a series of sermons on "TheSocialism of the Primitive Church." In 1891, he was forced to resignfrom his Boston church, the Bethany Baptist church, because of hissocialist activities. He then joined the staff of the *Youth's**Companion*(3). By February 1892, Francis Bellamy and Upham had lined up the NationalEducation Association to support the *Youth's* *Companion* as a sponsorof the national public schools' observance of Columbus Day along withthe use of the American flag. By June 29, Bellamy and Upham had arrangedfor Congress and President Benjamin Harrison to announce a nationalproclamation making the public school flag ceremony the center of thenational Columbus Day celebrations for 1892(4). Bellamy, under the supervision of Upham, wrote the program for thiscelebration, including its flag salute, the Pledge of Allegiance. Hisversion was, "I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which itstands -- one nation indivisible -- with liberty and justice for all." This program and its pledge appeared in the September 8 issue of*Youth's* *Companion*(5). He considered putting the words "fraternity"and "equality" in the Pledge but decided they were too radical andcontroversial for public schools(6). The original Pledge was recited while giving a stiff, uplifted righthand salute, criticized and discontinued during WWII. The words "myflag" were changed to "the flag of the United States of America" becauseit was feared that the children of immigrants might confuse "my flag"for the flag of their homeland. The phrase, "Under God," was added byCongress and President Eisenhower in 1954 at the urging of the Knightsof Columbus(7). The American Legion's constitution includes the following goal: "Tofoster and perpetuate a one hundred percent Americanism." One of itsmajor standing committees was the "Americanism Commission" and itssubsidiary, the "Counter Subversive Activities Committee." To the fearof immigrants, it added the fear of communism(8). Over the years the Legion has worked closely with the NEA and with theUS Office of Education. The Legion insisted on "one hundred percent"Americanism in public school courses in American history, civics,geography and English. The Pledge was a part of this Americanismcampaign(9) and, in 1950, the Legion adopted the Pledge as an officialpart of its own ritual(10). In 1922, the Ku Klux Klan, which also had adopted the "one hundredpercent Americanism" theme along with the flag ceremonies and thePledge, became a political power in the state of Oregon and arranged forlegislation to be passes requiring all Catholic children to attendpublic schools. The US Supreme Court later overturned thislegislation(11). Perhaps a team of social scientists and historians could explain whyover the last century the Pledge of Allegiance has become a majorcenterpiece in American patriotism programs. A pledge or loyalty oathfor children was not built around the Declaration of Independence -- "Wehold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."Or the Gettysburg address -- "a new nation conceived in liberty anddedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal..." Apparently, over the last century, Americans have been uncomfortable with the word "equality" as a patriotic theme. In 1992 the nation willbegin its second century with the Pledge of Allegiance. Perhaps the timehas come to see that this allegiance should be to the US constitutionand not to a piece of cloth.