Further thoughts - as advertising gets more clever, so do it's targets. It's been going on for about 100 years. The expression "Get with the times, or become part of the past" comes to mind, eh?

***Disclaimer - I worked at an ad agency for 3 years and then got the hell out so I could actually animate and composite and draw and so forth, instead of sit in douchey meetings with people I wanted to strangle.***

I used to get mad when I saw advertising masquerading as "real people"-made internet videos. But I am starting to change in the way I feel about this stuff. I think if the video is good and fun enough to *become* viral, then it's source and motivation is, while not quite "irrelevant", then certainly secondary.

Do some of you really think that this is an exploitive thing to do? I mean, advertising agencies are probably the most douchebag-filled buildings in the world, but it's always been that way. Are you people seriously this far behind the times? This is what advertising is becoming, and maintaining a virginal point of view towards it is, in my opinion, akin to the record companies trying to ban home tape recorders in the 60's. This video is NOTHING compared to what's coming. The internet is a place that everyone is going to have to learn to live in, and that includes the corporations that have had their asses kicked by it for about fifteen years now. When they do figure it out, it's going to be in ways like this, and it will only make it more interesting.

I'm not personally so worried about my freewill. My grip on it is not so tenuous. Cleverly hidden ads arent going to turn us into a nation of automatons - well, not boingboing readers, anyhow. :)

My point is simply, there's just not enough of a connection for me, personally, to find irony. Everything else that followed is just intellectual extrapolation. But if you find it, enjoy !

Everybody cool it... Scottfree... Marseillaise is an awesome song, and due to repeated viewings of Casablanca, I've managed to retain pretty positive associations with it, French Right be fucked... if someone told me that song was banned, I'd be ready to fly over there and start setting up barricades in Paris...

"Is there anything else the Nazis weren't the first to do you would like to defend?"

Well, how about being German ?

Yeah Ill Lich, maybe it just means, "at least you're not down in the shit with the grunts in Fallujah ! Sign up, please - and we'll try to coddle you into the Marines."

Elfsternberg - well, I agree about the swastika. The association there is much too strong for anyone to go about in the West wearing a swastika tee.

However, If we follow your logic to the end - banning everything that could possibly recall Nazism - shouldn't we ban the entire German language...? Or any song that might have been sung in the Nazi period ? How about Strauss ? Let's ban all Late German classical music...

Yes, shouldn't it more like, "this blogger should read more German history before telling the Air Force to read more German history" ?

It's kneejerkiness. According to Wikipedia,

"The music was written by Joseph Haydn in 1797 as anthem for the birthday of the Austrian Emperor Francis II of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, which became the Austrian Emperors' anthem till the end of monarchy in 1918. In 1797 Haydn used it also for the second movement of his String Quartet No. 62 in C major, Op. 76, No. 3 (which is thus also known as Kaiserquartett)."

"On 11 August 1922, President Friedrich Ebert made all three official stanzas of Das Lied der Deutschen the official German national anthem..."

"During the Nazi era, the first stanza was heavily used, unlike the second and especially the third, which did not fit at all into the agenda with its "freedom and justice"[citation needed]. Instead, the Horst-Wessel-Lied was played after the first stanza."

"In 1945, after the end of World War II, singing Das Lied der Deutschen was banned for some time by the allies, due to its use by the Nazis, as were other symbols used by Nazi Germany."

Perhaps most interestingly,

"Unlike many other anthems (e.g., La Marseillaise, God Save the Queen, The Star Spangled Banner, Himno Nacional Mexicano), it does not praise nor even mention war in any way, which could have played a role in Germany's decision to continue using it after World War II."

A long-winded blog comment, to be sure, but simply put, cool it, folks...

Does anyone else look at this and say, "the very existence of a bag like this just shows how very sheltered we are"?

OMG ! Philip K. Dick is ALIIIIIVE !!!!