Ever thought the world right now has become like a Coles store for culture, where everything is going down, down, down. All our values, aesthetics, integrity, artistic appreciation, our very culture in every way, in every area.

I mean really, dumbing down is now complete. Exemplified by those inane Coles’ tv commercials. They are down alright. Total fucking downers.

Look at the nerds, dumb-oxs, lummoxes they use to sing that shit to you. Who the hell are they supposed to inspire or even appeal to? (apologies to the actors who are forced to appear like this.) A bunch of not funny weirdos singing a banal, thoroughly irritating jingle, while actually giving you the finger.

Giving the finger to the last vestiges of good taste.

What stoned out, coke sucking, (I said coke not ….) ad agency, copy writing, cock head strutted proudly into his client’s boardroom and actually presented that shit?

What’s worse, there were probably 6 highly paid corporate suckhead executives who bought that pile of putrid dung. All enthusiasm. “Yeah. Oh yeah! Simple message! No one can miss.” (the idiots really meant simplistic only they don’t know the damn difference) “Yeah. Delivered by ordinary simple punters.” (They really meant simpletons but then being simpletons they, again, couldn’t possibly distinguish between the two). The others all chime. “Rad” “Cool” “Genius”

Genius? Now the most devalued word in our society. Along with “good”. As in “That’s good”. Which once was high praise in Australia and even in America but, oh so long ago.

One could only hope against hope that the iced up copywriter was so jacked off with his job that he/she wrote those crap commercials in protest. Satire at it’s finest. (Hands up those who think that was possible.)

Imagine his/her surprise, horror, when his inane campaign took flight and flooded our airwaves for fucking infinity.

But I suspect he/she didn’t know the difference either.

And don’t get me started on those intelligence insulting, little red cars. Purileness at its most offensive. And the use of quotation marks when they suggest you get an insurance “quote”. (Clearly they don’t even know what was wrong with that.)

I KNOW – these are just commercials. Retail commercials – yelling, shouting, raucous, rabid, retail commercials. The only job of which is to irritate and annoy the fuck out of you until you run screaming, from what used to be your haven of a living room, to their oh so tastefully decorated stores (Tasteful to them is a word you look up in a dictionary of ancient expressions) to buy any damn thing in the hope it will stop this mind numbing, neurasthenic, endlessly repetitive, brain piercing barrage that now take up way more of every television hour than the mind numbing pap that passes for programming.

You can’t miss the stores. The signage, you might say, lacks subtlety (another ancient word) and the big pointing finger (cause that’s what you are about to get) stabs you to the entrance. Once inside you are given the finger in every direction, every aisle. On every product almost. Most of which are chosen for their lowest common denominator appeal and mostly for their cheapness because their manufacturers have all been given the finger, called cost minimisation, so that you believe you can get more for the minimum money you earn because those manufacturers are forced to pay you minimum money. If you get my drift.

Is there a reason all the fingers are big, red and thick?

Bend over Australia.

Like I said at the start this is a mere example of the dumbing down of our Meet The Kardashians, Celebrity Survivors, Great Bake Off, Next Top Model, Judge Judy, The Voice, Australia’s Got Talent (now there’s a misunderstood word), Brexit, Abbot and Turnbull (should be Abbott and Costello) World.

Which, because of all this, DONALD TRUMP IS NOW THE LEADER OF.

We’ve gone down, down, down almost as far as we can go where politicians have invented a new phrase for not keeping their promises – Campaign Speak. Never mind, there probably won’t be any dictionaries in the future to find that in.

Let this be a warning to us all to lift our games and fight back to raise our standards and revive culture in our society.

Fred Schepisi – November 2016