You Need Uncle… Sam? Nah, You Need Unca Donald…

Ok, people of a certain age will remember a deodorant called “Uncle Sam”.

For those of you who are younger… And those of you who are older but forget things that are trivial and of no consequence:

The deodorant was a clever play on the famous ad:

The ad basically suggested…

Actually, it explicitly said: “You need Uncle Sam, You need Uncle Sam…”

And, rather ironically, in an age when young people were protesting about Australia being the running lapdogs of the capitalists trying to expand their market into Vietnam, Uncle Sam – the deodorant achieved a certain popularity.

Its failure, in the end, was because it was basically no good. As a friend told me at the time, “It has no smell and it doesn’t stop you sweating… It’s fuckin’ useless!”

Ok, I understand that marketing can often triumph over quality, but there is a limit to that.

“Unca Donald, why does Unca Scrooge swim in his money bin?”

“Because he can, Huey, because he can!”

For those of you who’ve never read the Gospel According To Walt (Disney, not Whitman), that’s a reference to Donald Duck cartoons. Donald Duck cartoons do a wonderful job of the explaining the best of American life. One moment, Donald doesn’t have enough money to buy a camera, but when the nephews come home with a camera, he can suddenly afford tickets to some overseas country where he intends to take photos. Mm, this is the way it works over there apparently. Everything you need falls into your lap; then you can go wherever you like…

Almost everything about America… No, it’s not America. America is the continent. Two continents, actually. The country is “The United States Of America”.

Gee, Alanis Morrissette, that’s ACTUALLY ironic.

And speaking of irony…

Did you find it ironic that while Donald Trump was attracting flack for de-classifying documents, our current Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet only attracts page five in the Mandrake Media for “accidentally” release classified material?

Oh, just me then?

 

About Rossleigh 1447 Articles
Rossleigh is a writer, director and teacher. As a writer, his plays include “The Charles Manson Variety Hour”, “Pastiche”, “Snap!”, “That’s Me In The Distance”, “48 Hours (without Eddie Murphy)”, and “A King of Infinite Space”. His acting credits include “Pinor Noir Noir” for “Short and Sweet” and carrying the coffin in “The Slap”. His ten minutes play, “Y” won the 2013 Crash Test Drama Final.

6 Comments

  1. No, not just you, Rossleigh ….good points, by the way……We don’t need Uncle Sam, or The United States of America” or Donald, and all his buddies…..and destructiveness Inc, unravelling of safeguards, laws etc;…… or, what is, doing here, in “mini-me’ land …

  2. Rossleigh, I’m reminded of an awful joke I heard in the 70s:

    Q: What do you get when you cross Uncle Sam with Auntie Jack?

    A: An underarm deodorant that rips your bloody arms off.

    I told you it was awful.

    So awful, in fact, that I don’t know why I repeated it.

    Where’s my mind? 😳

  3. there is a poster that has uncle sam pointing and saying ‘we need you’ the advert was a play on that poster but who cares ‘needs’ ‘wants’ today’s english finds it too hard to differentiate.

    You’re big, bold and tough, Rossleigh
    But you’re not so rough???

  4. That filing cabinet event was pure slapstick. Turnbull’s not only a piss-poor politician, he’s an even pisser poorer actor. Seems like he’s got coating of Teflon because nobody is holding him to account.

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