Live Strong

From the NY Times via Council on Foundation's Philanthropic Advisor Network List Serv:

 

Alliances between corporations and nonprofits for the benefit of this or that cause are hardly a rarity these days. In fact, U.S. companies now sink about $1 billion a year into partnerships with do-gooder organizations, about 10 times what they spent a decade ago, according to David Hessekiel of the Cause Marketing Forum. Some of these efforts are successful; some aren't. But rarely does one manage to do what the Live Strong yellow bracelet has done, which is spark a consumer craze. 

The bracelet -- a round hunk of synthetic silicon rubber stamped with the phrase ''Live Strong'' -- started selling in May at Niketown outlets, as well as at Foot Locker stores and various independent retailers. It cost $1, and proceeds were sent to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, the nonprofit charitable organization associated with the champion cyclist, who is a famous cancer survivor. ''Live Strong'' is the foundation's motto; yellow, among other things, echoes the color of the lead rider's jersey in the Tour de France. Nike underwrote the production and distribution of the entire first run of five million, meaning that 100 percent of the proceeds, plus another $1 million Nike threw in, went straight to the foundation.

What do you think? Who is helping or exploiting whom, to what effect? Symbiosis or profanation? Charity as PR? Brand building with the cachet of Lance Armstrong, with charitable purpose as cheap access to his name and image? Fad marketing? The elision of social life with the brazen rituals of big bidnis? When charities think like (speaking as a marketer myself) professional brand builders, who wins and loses? For myself I find campaigns like this to cheapen charitable giving by mixing it with so many motives that redound to private rather public benefit. Worse, each time charity concedes public to private purpose, and subordinates caritas to marketing, we give up a little piece of our "souls."  Or, just say, that the mixture, or even predominance, of noncharitable benefits tends to dilute the charitable "brand" and call it into disrepute. You can only sell your virginity a few times; and even getting a good price does not make it high class. As you sell out, and get the rep you deserve, the price tends to fall anyway.  When so few do, I wish charities would stake the highest ground they can. 

Comments

[Chris Corrigan]

I wish big bidnis would stake the highest ground they possible can.

It's grey...I don't think I can really define these kinds of things on a polarity as stark as the ones you are using to throw the question into relief.

I guess there is a concern with "horsetrading" of brand identities, casues and money, but if your charity is in the business of raising a lot of money (cancer research needs more than passionate vounteers) then you are not far from adopting a "shareholder's-interests-at-any-price" mentality. And in that respect maybe cancer research and Nike marketing are made for one another.

Still, if EVERYONE were to stake a little higher ground, that would be better.

[Phil Cubeta]

How, Chris, does charity as "brand" differentiate itself from business as usual? When the lines blur between for-profit and non-profit, I sometimes wonder if non-profits begin to lose their defining difference, and with it the credibility that makes them attractive marketing partners in the first place. But, I am not in the bind of needing to raise money.

Take another case. Say you were hired by BigCo which had a PR image problem and were asked what is the cheapest way to get this fixed? Charity would come to mind. Gives me pause; and I think it would give pause to a firm like The Philanthropic Initiative and others who have corporate clients who "do" strategic philanthropy. See Karoff, Greek Tragedy II. ">http://www.tpi.org/karoffcorner/greekchorus/the_greek_chorus_second.htm"/>

Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. You're right; I am being polemical to stir up a conversation.

[Lenore Ealy]

Hi, Phil. I actually bought one of the bracelets--it was only a buck. But clearly on the presumption that the money was indeed going to the foundation.

The defining difference of a nonprofit is merely it's tax-exempt status, and the presumption that it is "doing good." Nonprofits can be as corrupt as commercial organizations. Companies can be as virtuous as humanitarian organizations.

As a fan of looking at the shadows, why do you always assume that on the nonprofit side there are so few shadows and on the commercial side so little light?

While I am a champion of the higher moral virtues and habits that inspire us to care for and serve one anothe--and not merely an apologist for market transaction--I think a little Mandevillian outlook on these matters serves us well. What's wrong with $6,000,000 going to the Lance Armstrong Foundation $1 at a time, anyway? Had it been to fund the movie about the Nobel Prize Winners that was being discussed in Chicago, would it bother you so much? What if the money came in $1 at a time, but because Nestle sold a bag of rich cocoa for $1 at the grocery checkout? What's so wrong with a win-win?

[Phil]

Lenore,

What was wrong with simony, or the sale of relics? Nike has an image problem, based on its labor practices. This is, perhaps, a cheap way to launder it? Does the chunk of rubber have any reference back to Nike? Either on it, or tied to it by some PR or marketing campaign? By wearing it you are bearing witness to what - your generosity, attitude towards Nike? The meme works wonders. See how it spreads. Somebody at Nike or their PR firm should be chortling.

I love your prose though. Do you know Robinson Crusoe? As he ransacks the ship of western civilization to privatize the goods to his island, he takes, of course the Bible, and a rifle. He next finds a bag of gold and delivers a moralistic tirade against the evils of wealth. "Then on second thought," he says, "I took it with me, since it might come in handy." From Christian morals to Machiavelli in a single sentence, beginning with the word "While...." What I am reacting against, as a good Catholic, is the vulgarity of these Venture Pilgrim with a Bible in one hand, a rifle over the shoulder, a bag of money in the other, a wall around their private property, and Friday kissing their foot.

My sensibility and sense of propriety are wounded, I find it demoralizing. Saps my desire to devote love and attention to nonprofits when I think of them as failed or half-successful bidnesses, and of their playling lackey to gains, often ill-gotten. We need the nonprofit sector to show us the way to a better world, not connive with the slicksters. (Speaking as one.)

Your attitudes are more realistic and certainly in the ascendency. (Moll Flanders today would have her own talk show.)

[Lenore Ealy]

Ahh, Moll Flanders.. now there was a real survivor!

If it makes you happy to know, I threw the yellow bracelet away. Not my fashion style. The $1 was $1 to the foundation essentially, for which I'll get no tax deduction because I was provided goods in the form of the bracelet. That should make you progressive types happy! The Armstrong foundation got the $1 and the US government still got about 66cents more of my money in the taxes paid! Talk about win-wins! I'm really the one losing in that deal, but the funny thing is that I'm the one saying, "what's the problem?!" Probably just false consciousness or self-justification of my impulsive action in buying the thing in the first place--though I saw it merely as a gift of $1, rather than a purchase, from the moment I handed the money over!

What cause has your moral outrage helped to fund at the cost to you of $1.66 total? [Well, ok, perhaps moral outrage manages to cook up a larger gifts at a time than $1.66!]

For all that, however, I'm willing to suspect anyone's and everyone's motives. Good Calvinist that I am, I don't get all worked up over corruption since I don't expect much better. Tend to work up enough moral outrage looking in my own heart than to have to go looking for it elsewhere.

Good Smithian that I am, I think it's remarkable that despite our mixed motives, we have systems from which any good at all can come. Yet here I sit--far too late in the night--having a conversation with someone across the country by typing on this strange electronic contraption that will show the message to anyone in the world who is wired and cares to look.

Yes, I'm more realistic and pragmatist, I guess. But mostly just genuinely grateful.

[Jon Husband]

Given Phil's and Lenore's perspectives articulated above, how is giving one buck (a loony, we call it up here in the great frozen white North) to all the rationalizations and justifications we make when buying a Nike/not-for-profit cancer foundation any different than giving a buck to some guy or gal sitting on the street ?

You could get into a conversation with them, and make strongly your point that they should put the proceeds of their efforts towards a ham sandwhich rather than a bit more Pruno, AND you never really know, do tyou, whther that buckj is the first one that makes the difference ... either the first buck in their kid's college fund because that was the one buck that helped make the change (or maybe it was the grace of an actual person stopping to admonish and maybe listen) or the one buck that made their particular vice for once and for all never-stoppable. How do we know ?

I'm with Phil here ... regardless of all the (possible) rationalizations and justifications, there is a clear link to the marketing and publicity for Nike, and as for me, I have to draw some moral lines somewhere. that's one I would draw ... problem is, that type of initiative is commonplace these days, and one more piece of evidence that the frame belongs to the for-profit market, regardless of the commodity or purpose.

Very very hard to see where it all stops ... would Nike support a mauve band with yellow letters declaring Die Strong for a non-profit supporting euthanasia with grace as a way to reduce health care costs for all citizens ?

[Chris Corrigan]

Well, my father-in-law is wearing a LiveStrong bracelt right now becasue he is battling cancer and that cheap piece of rubber is his constant reminder of Lance Armstrong, one of his heros. So there's another tack there.

I've been thinking about this, and I get Phil's point. Here is my take on where that takes us, perhaps in a positive way.

Nike is bad ass when it comes to, well, lots of stuff. Charity (it's hard to call it philanthropy) doesn't let them off the hook, but it comes across as one way to return some of these profits to the community. Interestingly, if you look at Hyde's theory of gift, Nike IS interested in establishing a bond to people but it is a double endged sword because it brings charities into the exchange economy. By doing it like this Nike is actually playing on it's own bad reputation out there. This is non-proactive philanthropy. Nike knows it has a problem and this is part of the fix. To admit it in such a bald-faced way as to spin it into a money making proposition is astonishing when you think about it.

Therefore, if Nike's involvement constitutes a transaction, then their donation isn't a gift and it's tainted.

And it isn't just the chairties that are indicted...it's those who buy the bracelets too. People have lost sight of the real menaing of donating and providing a gift, because they engage in the only way they know how: making it look like a transaction. That way you're getting value for your money. This is why Michael's Giving Market is going to work by the way...;-). It looks like the transactional models people are used to using, but, done right, it might yet draw people into more active connection with their world.

So everyone is being played for a sucker. Cancer research comes out $6 million more flush than before, Nike comes out smelling sweeter than sweat and everyone gets a yellow piece of plastic. And the Plastic Bracelet Manufacturers Association of Oregon wins too, with its biggest ever order.

Phil is asking us to comtemplate the bigger implications of immersing ourselves in this kind of relationship between bidnis, charity and transactions. Here's what St. Lewis Hyde would say about that:

"Gifts from evil people must also be refused lest we be bound to evil...It is becasue gift exchange *is* and erotic form that so many gifts must be refused. The issue commonly arises in public life. Should a university accept an endowment from a notorius dictator? Should a writer or scientist accept a grant from a government waging an immoral war? We often refuse the relationship either from the simple desire to remain unentangled, or becasue we sense that the proffered connection is tainted, dangerous, or frnakly evil. And when we refuse relationships, we must refuse gift exchange as well."

So my conclusion to draw from all of this, upon further reflection, is that the rationale for accepting Nike's gift draws the charity into a relationship. Saying that they have no choice is a profoundly disempowering move. What if the beneficiaries of the gift held a press conference when Nike first approached them and said "We've been approached by Nike and we are refusing a gift of $6 million dollars because they have never resolved their sweat shop practices satisfactorily. We are researchers and we have huge financial needs, but we are also members of the human community, and as such, we cannot take this gift."

That would be something, eh?

[Phil Cubeta]

All you can ask of an exchange of "gifts" like this in the comment section is to bring out the issues. Seems that we have. Since, to those who don't know the participants, it may seem that Lenore has just beaten the tar out of me, let me say we are good friends and debate like this all the time for pleasure. As she notes, I am indeed a moralizing hypocrite - living proof that social conservatives, like Bill Bennet have not cornered that niche. My outrage is less than I pretend. I would just like to see a charitable sector that didn't go hat in hand to business, much as Lenore would like to see a charitable sector that gets off the government dole. I think she and I both are espousing, or dreaming of, an Independent Sector with its own integrity, much as laid out by Dick Cornuelle, one her heroes and mine. She is right too, that it is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.

I am going to go make a $1.66 donation to the ACLU to square my accounts.

[Phil Cubeta]

Chris, thanks for the St. Lewis Hyde. He has a wonderfully attuned moral and aesthetic sense. Yes, a gift goes around. You accept a gift you reciprocate - as in the Godfather - remember? when the undertaker comes to the Don and asks a favor? As the Don says, he will ask the undertaker some day "to do him a service." Or, in the proverb, "If you lie with dogs you get fleas."

More importantly is a failure of imagination. What if the marketing genius who thought up the bracelet, and increase goodwill for Nike, and floor traffic, had devoted the same energy and inguity into helping cancer victims, or Lance Armstrong, pro bono? Could the gifts of that genius have been used to greater effect with a less mixed result?

As citizens do we live only in the market, with glimpses of gift culture, of altruism, of caritas? Or, are their parts of our lives that are sacred, like family, church, school, helping neighbors? And can we keep those nonprofit precints as havens, not corrupted by the money changers? The model for the outraged man with the whip chasing Nike from the Temple is not Calvin, it is Jesus.

[Phil Cubeta]

Jon, you wrote "that type of initiative is commonplace these days, and one more piece of evidence that the frame belongs to the for-profit market, regardless of the commodity or purpose." Yes, as someone who was raised on a college campus, pre-tv and who read literature like a maniac until I had finally to get an honest job at age 31, I am appalled at how the language of the market, and its gimmicks, like the bracelet have permeated our minds, our lives, our souls, leaving little or nothing of a public vocabulary and shared tradition from which to reassert our more native, but now submerged, traditons of barn-raising, giving, altruism, and participation in the arts. I see the whole Lance Armstrong thing as the symptom of the mass mind, the unwitting victim of 30 years of incessant brand propaganda. I respond as I do to posters of Stalin, with a shudder of visceral disgust. Propaganda is propaganda no matter where the $1 goes, and the price is paid in our acquienscence to brand over substance, hype over truth, and our desire, like lemmings to wear arm bands, bracelets, brand logos and other indications of lemming-like identity. We turn our bodies into billboards and call it self-expression. Ours is a society run mad and the best hope of spiritual renewal does not run through Footlocker.

[ruralsaturday]

Ted Bundy volunteered at a suicide hotline in Seattle. People that worked with him were impressed with his compassion and insight.
I don't have a problem with him doing that after the other aspects of his life are out in the open, though most people would, I think.
It doesn't ameliorate. It's why they have this check box on the probation department eval. forms "Shows Remorse/Does Not Show Remorse".
People can change, remarkably, profoundly, and virtually overnight. That possibility must be kept viable. But psychopaths can modulate their affect to gull the unwary, they can go through the motions of altruism and compassion, sociopaths too, and corporations are almost invariably sociopathic constructs.
They have no families to nurture them, no human histories, no emotional needs to temper their appetites.
In a sense it's like a separate, predatory species tricking us into accepting them, because they look like us and speak our languages, because they act as though they share our goals, our hopes, and most especially, our parental regard. But it's acting, it's not a genuine commonality.
It's that parental regard that's most glaringly absent from the corporate personality. Corporations do not have children.
That difference, when you finally see it for what it is, can look really, really creepy. Because a heartlessness, a dispassionate cruelty, underlies the similarity of affect.
Real human beings fill the board rooms, yes, and that may be their saving grace, but merely acting kind, committing acts that are seen as acts of kindness, isn't proof of kindred.

[Phil]

The most important thing to me is that some of those who site in positions of influence or power, in the board room, as you say, or on the marketing teams, or the philanhtropic advisors, manage a dual consciousness, thinking within the business mindset to do their jobs, but thinking as citizens too, and beginning to flag the madness. As a philanthropic consultant I can see how someone made a buck off this meme, as an advisor. I can image sitting in a bar chortling with glee at how far a small budeget has gone in getting kids to wear the bracelet. But I would also be ashamed.

Reminds me of a salesman I trained, a burnout in his 50's. He said that he had once worked in car dealership, and made a bet with his buddies that he could get the next old lady to walk to get on her knees and kiss the whitewalls of a particular car. He did, and collected. That was for him the highpoint of his career.

Those on the inside don't want the dual consciousness because it requires remorse. But remorse is the proper emotion for whatever genius goes into these "nag marketing" campaigns. Easier, I guess, to "Live Strong" as a marketer five days a week, and sing Hosanna on the seventh.

[steven]

i want a live strong band

[Phil]

You are in good company, Steve. You want what you are supposed to want. You are normal. Join the others.

[Amber]

Are you going to start making and selling more live strong ban? If so when.

[Phil]

Sorry, Amber, I never made any here. You might want to ask Nike.

[Katie]

me and my friends are planning ot buy them and sell them for less at our school. we may lose money, but it's for a good cause. but i was wondering, where exactly can we get them?

[Phil Cubeta]

Don't have that information, Katie. Sorry. Best of luck with your efforts.

[grace]

im so happy i could support the lance armstrong foundation. ,y uncle has cancer and ive been praying a lot for him. thanx again!

[taylor]

My Mom works with a mission group called Operation Smile and we were looking to make a these bracelets with the company slogna on them and sell them while having all the proceeds going to the surgeries Operation Smile performs. Is there a company that I can talk to that will help me pursue this mission?

[Cheryl]

Everyone in my high school has one and I want one!

[Olivia]

Hey everyone in my high school are wearing the live strong bands, and so am I.I hope we helped out. :)

[molly]

you can buy live strong braclets at www.laf.org, but there is a 3-4 week waiting period.

[Lisa]

I want to get one real bad. My grandmother has alzheimers (sp?). I dunno if that is a cancer tho...

PS> Where can I get one, without having to buy one off the internet? I think my mom's work mite have one (shes a doctor)...

[Alexis Mortis]

I think that it is really intersting that you guys are trying to help the ones who have cancer.

[Polly]

Hey guys! We can get them on eBay!!!!!!

[Barbara Garce]

Get me one yellow braclet on sale or a few please thanx Barb!

[chelsea m]

I would love to have 10 bracelets cuz everyone has one that i no

[chelsea m]

the reason i want 10 is cuz my uncle has cancer/lucimia and hotchcins desease. i love that u made braslelts about it thanxxx
chelsea

[KarrIne]

I am in middle school and everyone in my school is wearing them. I saw them wearing them and i thought that was kool so now i have one i have the pink one that says Share Beauty.Spread Hope. and i love it. That is great that you made them cuz a lot of people are supporting them now by wearing the braclets!
~*~KarrIne~*~

[katy]

where can i get a free yellow livestrong band from

[Danielle Grosso]

omg..i absolutly love them! i have two...a pink one that says *Share Beauty Spread Hope* and one yellow LiveSTRONG! and i wear em ALL the time..i wanted one really bad because everyone in my school has them..(but some arn't real (i mean not live the pink and purple liveSTRONG)!) and my friend told me i should get one because they help people with cancer...so i was thinking my Aunt has cancer/lucimia so i bought a few for my family too and they wear theres ALL the time! i hope liveSTRONG will go on for a long time and the people who have cancer will get better! :-D

[James]

Where can I purchase a "Livestrong" bracelet
and make a donation. I was recently diagnosed with cancer.

James
Raleigh, NC

[katy-jo]

i realy want one to coz like all me mates have got one n i think thet should let you order them of the internet for free like the bullying bands coz i cant find anywere to get one

[Harry]

There's something to be said for giving comment space to the morbidly stupid and self-absorbed, but they do have areas of the net already set aside for them.

[Phil]

Just children, Harry, a kind of laboratory in which you can read the future of our society. I am sure many do, dreaming up the next fad. If the same intellect were put into education and child rearing, teaching the skills of critical thinking, democracy would be much stronger. I find it fascinating, but sad, to read the comments and see how Nike gamesmanship has taken on a life of its own, doing good, on balance, if you don't count the manipulation of the young as an evil. This site gets 20-100 hits an hour on the Yellow Bracelet post.

[zac]

are the DIE HARD bands bad or something?

[Phil]

Zac, if people were cattle stampeding them would be a good thing, if you were trying to get them to move in a given direction. If they buffalo, even better. From stampeding them off a cliff, as the American Indians once did, we get the expression, "to be buffaloed." You have to ask yourself if you and your friends are being buffaloed, by whom, why?

[Harry]

Phil, the proximity of people who don't know what they're doing and who rush in to impose their narrative on things that require some understanding beyond "I want, I want now, why won't you let me have?" makes me very nervous :-( They will grow up to believe and defend whatever Fox News tells them is true.

The tale of Jonah should be rewritten as a hapless, feckless, clueless consumer whose prophecies of useless crap to be had dirt cheap brought misfortune on his fellows. They trampled each other and died in a writhing pile in a Wal Mart aisle.

[Harry]

Those bracelets, by the way, can kill people.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/health/3989874/detail.html

"A hospital chain is taping over patients' LiveStrong wristbands because they are yellow -- the same color as the "do not resuscitate" bands it puts on patients who do not want to be saved if their heart stops".

[Phil]

Harry, I think you managed to put into words what has concerned me about the bands, as one example among many, of marketing to children and adolescents. We do have generous social impulses and kids want to be good, and thought of as good. To take that motivation and turn it into a fad marketing program is.... well, sad. So much more could be done with the same impulses if the motivation were really to help kids and help society. To teach kids, on the other hand, to be systematically suspicious of the motives of the grownups who insidiously jerk them this way and that is to raise kids who would be without trust of anyone. If there is such a thing as fiduciary responsibility to children our marketers have failed it miserably. We have lost even the sensitivity to that depravity. We fear pedophilia, see it everywhere, but the marketer has designs no less malign and invades children in ways that are even more intimate. We are seeing now what citizens raised by media look like, as you say, they look like consumers readily programmed by FOX.

[Harry]

Marketing is deliberately designed to excite prurient interest in things that are taboo for good reasons. The neurotic mess we've made of ourselves with cult perversions of ethical belief systems makes most of us easy prey.

Tis the season to restrict civil liberties, Phil. Or even blast away them with cannons while chuckling ghoulishly. Perhaps our cultural conservative brothers and sisters would agree to reasonable restrictions on commercial free speech. I know quite a few who aren't post modern cargo cultists. They outnumber the noisy, sanctimonious cretins http://tinyurl.com/72b76

[I Need AlliveStrong]

can anyone find me a link that has 10 live strong band in british pounds

[tom duggan]

how do u get 1 free band.and is it one per house hold.

[Harry]

You have to pay for them. Don't be a cheapskate, Tom Duggan! The Lance Armstrong Foundation is selling them. That's a hypertext link you can click on. Here it is again made simple http://www.laf-store.org/.

[Phil]

Yeah, if they wuz free there would be no money to cure cancer. Wait a few months, you will be able to pick them out of 1,00,000 Dumpsters all over America.

[Katherine]

Oh, my...I just wandered into this conversation on accident trying to research a way to get my middle schooler bracelets for various causes that she has decided are important to her. (Plus the bracelets are cool, you know.) Anyway, I think that I will try to get her the bracelets from "reputable" sources to honor her honest impulse to help, but along the way show her the websites of the charitable organizations that are focused on the causes she is interested in. Then I will make a "real" donation to the Red Cross for international relief in front of her eyes & let her know that that is one of many good ways to help. Maybe we should spend more time helping our children to act on their good impulses instead of ranting on the internet. Please don't rag on the Red Cross now...

[Phil]

Hurrah! After all the comments on this thread, Katherine, you strike exactly the right note, it seems to me. Yes, bracelets are ok, or a lesser of mixed blessings, but what is best? And how can we model giving, and help kids express what we all hope is a life long motive, devotion to the needs of others? Bravo for you! Your suggestions are eminently sensible and balanced.

[alex etheridge]

were do you get of these braclet for free i want one

[Phil]

You wanting is well understood. Duly noted. Now what we get off you that makes free a value proposition from our perspective?

[Harry]

None of them will be back to read, Phil. Alex has no more consciousness of what he says and where it's said than any impulse shopper.

Most of the bracelet seekers live wholly in that great moment of needing to have something; whatever is trendy at the moment and will give an empty life some visible symbol of existence. They lack the inner resources to figure out how to get it. So they flock to blogs and message boards in their hundreds of thousands and cry.

If you took down his email address and wrote back, he probably wouldn't know what you're talking about. The odds are he'll have fogotten what he said and where he said.

Twenty or thirty years from now, he'll be burdened with the whatever the median debt figure is and no closer to having a meaningful existence than he is now. May God have mercy on his soul.

[phil]

Been a very interesting thread for those of us marketing or who talk about "emergence." Here we so how "emergence" emerges under the stimulus of markting, how the group or herd dynamics kick in and what atrocious parenting it is for the young people whose energies, including the urge to belong and to be good, are channeled to corporate ends. As a parent it makes me sad. "Pick on someone your own size," I want to say to Nike, twist the heartstrings of grownups, not kids. Let them for crying out loud growup a little before you run your cost/benefit routines and hire the child psychologist to find some other motive to tap and channel to ends specificed by top management.

[Harry]

There are two perils for those who would effect change. The first is coming to terms with things they way they are. It's similar to becoming institutionalized. You yield a lot when you no longer feel enraged at having to ask to leave your cubicle. To feel yourself rewarded when you're promoted above having to ask is worse.

The other is letting the rage make you an unpleasant person. It was good of Katherine to remind me.

[Christian Testimony Bracelet]

There is a new Christian Wristband, "Be a Testimony": http://www.beatestimony.com/

[Phil]

$2.99 for a green band to testify for Christ, who asked only that you follow him to the cross in solidarity with the lost and the hopeless. Good deal. Green is Mary's color, for hope. "Mary pray for us in our complacency, our materialism, our vanity, pray that a high wind shall blow across our land to renovate what market logic hath betrayed. Pray that the children, and those adults of childlike faith, may be saved from those who would make a buck off thy Son. In His holy name we pray."

[clarry]

send me a fuckin free one

[Harry]

Of course, clarry. Please post your address it and I'll have it delivered promptly.

[Phil]

Harry, she can have mine.

[ashley]

Can u send me 1 for free plz plz it wud b gd if it was is pink but i like the yellow 1's 2

[Phil]

Sure, kid, just have your Mom buy our $400 footwear for you.

[Harry]

Some of these have got to people having a bit of a troll. Surely there can't be such numbers of utterly clueless, greedy, morally destitute people? Please tell me some of them are trolling.

[Phil]

Average age may 10-11. It takes village to raise a child, Harry, but only a mall to corrupt them.

[klaus]

deer miss lonlyhearts!

if U would only send me the bracelet. it is for my little sister who is a cripple and a spaz. all the other kids are not nice but with the bracelet they mite like her. she is a spaz and all the other kids treat her like durt. she has to wear dorky leg-braces but it would be COOL to wear a braclet. she has axed me for the bracelet but i dont now how to get it. i can send a self dressed stamped envolope but tell me wher?

[Phil]

Klaus, you got the mall, see if you can find a Nike Store. Ask the nice man behind the counter.

[Harry]

klaus has the best reason for diving into Yellow Bracelet hell on someone's behalf. Maybe if the kids just laid off her for a bit she'd be happier for a day or two. Me, I think one of the little creeps who toys with her would steal it and tell her it's because she's a spaz.

[Ajax Bucky]

Eloi giggles above the thrum of the Morlock's engines under the lawn, down where the real heart beats.
Feral cherubs, immortal but soul-less, twittering at the mortals. The bitterness that comes as they grow into the choiceless future. That's who's in Iraq now mostly.
Little appetites. Big world.

[Phil]

Yellow Bracelets, A Private's Stripes. Yellow Ribbons. Bumper Stickers. Flag Decals. Someone is raising kids for purposes that exceed the veal calve's understanding, and outstrip even the best parent's control. The structural violence, we call Freedom of Choice.

[unknown]

ok i have been looking for these forever can u please tell me the price and can it please be below 1 dollar and also do u hav the pink ones to

[Harry]

Kristen, are you too stupid to read a thread? Your questions have already been answered.

[Ajax Bucky]

Harry, try, instead of seeing them as a little pack of chihuahuas yapping manically outside the car - seeing them as a resource easily transposed from the consumer modality to one of re-purposed utility.
Two hundred guinea pigs harnessed to a 3-wheel Segway, waiting in the garage. Or masses of little bunnies and puppies rolling big tumbling dynamos to power your G5 as they chase each other around the Happy Cage. Besides you might piss off their guardians by hurting their nascent good-intending little heart-buds, and anyone who's raised up such...well, at times caution serves.

[Harry]

Their guardians are too busy planing how to get away with poisoning grandpa. Long anticipated bequests take precedence over the sprogs' hurt widdle feelings. I would imagine they hate them by now anyway, expectation of dependency leading to love and respect having long since turned into a nightmare cycle of tantrums, abuse and trips to the shrink who will cure them with his dope.

[Harry]

Attention! All you bracelet cretins, listen up. Click on this link http://www.laf-store.org/ to get your heart's desire, the famous Yellow Bracelet! Once again, click on the pretty underlined text.
http://www.laf-store.org/. Can you see it? Yes? I'll put it on the page again. http://www.laf-store.org/

Please try not to be stupid! You will be much better off.

[Phil]

Harry, and friends, this is parenting, can't blame the kids. "Nag marketing," it is an industry employing child pscyhologists and others to hook the child's emerging ideals, and sense of belonging, to a corporate purpose. Of course it works. How hard is it to mess with a child's mind? Pedophilia is a symbol, and emblem, of what our society is doing to our children. We should be ashamed, and should reform. Children are not to be exploited.

[Harry]

The kids have been well-conditioned, Phil. They're immune to every effort to encourage them to develop inner resources. Their parents will defend the black psychology that warped them into little machines for the propagation of greenwashing. It's a free country, after all, and corporate pederasts need to make a living.

At some point, the process will become unsustainable, as similar anti-human initiatives have in the past, and their reaction will be based on a lifetime's brainwashing.

I'd hoped that some parent with a lingering sense of responsibility would follow his child's internet browser history and come across this, be horrified that his child is a cretin and take steps before it's too late. Perhaps a child angered at being called a cretin will direct his parents here.

[michale]

where do u get on of these bands form??????????????????????????????

[Phil]

Michale, Harry has one to share.

[Harry]

Just send them all my way, Phil.

[T. V.]

I just laughed so hard at Harry's website that you could have heard me a block away.

That even trumped the Miss Lonelyhearts bit, which is saying a lot.

[laura]

where do u get live strong bands from coz i really really want 1 and its been hard 4 me 2 find 1! or a pink cancer 1! all my friends have them but i cant find any plz help me?!? do u have to pay from them all by credit card or can u use cash for some?

[Harry]

Laura, click the big letters to go to this web address for help. YELLOW

[kurt mapstone]

i really wont 1 im 15 and i need 1 all me friends got 1 and they are kool if u are willing to give some away then plzzz email me

[caroline]

i wont some!!!!!!
please tell me there are some FREE ones somewhere pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
thankyou if you reply

[Harry]

I've called the child cathcer, Phil. Even setting up a special blog for all their yellow bracelet needs has not been enough to stem the tide.

I hope the defenders of this new age, cheap plastic, feel good program will reconsider at some point. Lowest common denominator initiatives reinforce juvenile cretinism :-)

[Phil]

The experiment was successful and will be repeated. Brands as identity construction. But the identity so formed...

[jammo]

can i ahve one for free????????????

[*]

i think these bands should be cheaper than what they are. i know they are to support cancer BUT not all of us have money to waste on a bit of rubber. i would love to support breast cancer by wearing one but i just cant afford to be worrying about them. I wish i could have one on my arm to show the support to my aunty who did 6 years ago of this horrid disease... but as ive explained i cant :(.
These should be cheaper and p&p should be free because thats a waste of money too!!
Thanks

[Phil]

Lee Ann your aunty deserves better. Think of her often, say a prayer for her. Leave the piece of rubber in the trash. Your love of your aunt deserves better than to be exploited by Nike. Nothing is sacred, but what we deem so. Keep part of yourself free from this commercial manipulation - think different for your aunty.

[Francisco]

I live in Dallas Texas where I can find those kind of brasalet ?
Thanks...!!

[Harry]

It looks to me like it's time to put this thread out of its misery, Phil. It's degenerated into random attention seeking.

[hey there]

I HATE LIVE STRONG BANDS!!!! They hav become a total fashion accessory- no one thinks about it- PLUS, they r totally contradictory... Guess who's making those bands u wear? Poor bloody ppl in the far East who r abused and get less than 5 pence a week- cmon, get real!

[phil]

Zapped the two comments above yours, Harry.

[Harry]

Thanks, Phil. Some topics eventually become the equivalent of "attractive nuisances". Children are drawn to them and do themselves harm by indulging in trolling.

[carl]

i think these bands should be free