Die, Reader's Digest, Die
Reader's Digest plans to file for bankruptcy
Over 80 years of propaganda and vomit inducing treacle.
The Reader’s Digest February 1938
"Not long ago the body of a young girl lay crushed on the sidewalk after a plunge from a Chicago apartment window. Everyone called it suicide, but actually it was murder. The killer was a narcotic known to America as marijuana, and to history as hashish. Used in the form of cigarettes, it is comparatively new to the United States and as a coiled rattlesnake.
How many murders, suicides, robberies and maniacal deeds it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured. In numerous communities it thrives almost unmolested, largely because of official ignorance of its effects.
Marijuana is the unknown quantity among narcotics. No one knows, when he smokes it, whether he will become a philosopher, a joyous reveler, a mad insensate, or a murderer.
The young girl’s story is typical. She had heard the whisper which has gone the rounds of American youth about a new thrill, a cigarette with a “real kick” which gave wonderful reactions and no harmful aftereffects. With some friends she experimented at an evening smoking party.
The results were weird. Some of the party went into paroxysms of laughter; others of mediocre musical ability became almost expert; the piano dinned constantly. Still others found themselves discussing weighty problems with remarkable clarity. The girl danced without fatigue throughout a night of inexplicable exhilaration.
Other parties followed. Finally there came a gathering at a time when the girl was behind in her studies and greatly worried. Suddenly, as she was smoking, she thought of a solution to her school problems. Without hesitancy she walked to a window and leaped to her death. Thus madly can marijuana “solve” one’s difficulties. It gives few warnings of what it intends to do to the human brain.
Last year a young marijuana addict was hanged in Baltimore for criminal assault on a ten-year old girl. In Chicago, two marijuana-smoking boys murdered a policeman. In Florida, police found a youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an ax he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. He had no recollection of having committed this multiple crime. Ordinarily a sane, rather quiet young man, he had become crazed from smoking marijuana. In at least two dozen comparatively recent cases of murder or degenerate sex attacks, marijuana proved to be a contributing cause."
By the way, RD is based in Pleasantville, NY, where William H. Macy may have to confront life without his favorite rag.
Over 80 years of propaganda and vomit inducing treacle.
The Reader’s Digest February 1938
"Not long ago the body of a young girl lay crushed on the sidewalk after a plunge from a Chicago apartment window. Everyone called it suicide, but actually it was murder. The killer was a narcotic known to America as marijuana, and to history as hashish. Used in the form of cigarettes, it is comparatively new to the United States and as a coiled rattlesnake.
How many murders, suicides, robberies and maniacal deeds it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured. In numerous communities it thrives almost unmolested, largely because of official ignorance of its effects.
Marijuana is the unknown quantity among narcotics. No one knows, when he smokes it, whether he will become a philosopher, a joyous reveler, a mad insensate, or a murderer.
The young girl’s story is typical. She had heard the whisper which has gone the rounds of American youth about a new thrill, a cigarette with a “real kick” which gave wonderful reactions and no harmful aftereffects. With some friends she experimented at an evening smoking party.
The results were weird. Some of the party went into paroxysms of laughter; others of mediocre musical ability became almost expert; the piano dinned constantly. Still others found themselves discussing weighty problems with remarkable clarity. The girl danced without fatigue throughout a night of inexplicable exhilaration.
Other parties followed. Finally there came a gathering at a time when the girl was behind in her studies and greatly worried. Suddenly, as she was smoking, she thought of a solution to her school problems. Without hesitancy she walked to a window and leaped to her death. Thus madly can marijuana “solve” one’s difficulties. It gives few warnings of what it intends to do to the human brain.
Last year a young marijuana addict was hanged in Baltimore for criminal assault on a ten-year old girl. In Chicago, two marijuana-smoking boys murdered a policeman. In Florida, police found a youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an ax he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. He had no recollection of having committed this multiple crime. Ordinarily a sane, rather quiet young man, he had become crazed from smoking marijuana. In at least two dozen comparatively recent cases of murder or degenerate sex attacks, marijuana proved to be a contributing cause."
By the way, RD is based in Pleasantville, NY, where William H. Macy may have to confront life without his favorite rag.
posted by nolocontendere at 6:43 PM
3 Comments:
we've had a family member send us this mag for the past 3 years as a christmas gift. i want mr. n to politely inform them we would prefer a subscription to a UFO mag. i browse through it when it arrives and usually toss is aside wondering why i waste my time reading it.
I've had this thing against that insipid publication for decades. It passed itself off as a Norman Rockwell take on americana which so many people bought into, but was a smarmy propaganda tool about everything from drugs to war to the criminal elite. I actually read one lately somewhere as I had nothing better to do, and if anything it's actually worse now that they slicked the message up from the old timey shmaltz.
I read somewhere once that Reader's Digest didn't pay it's contributors for the articles it published because it had such a popular American cultural following as far back as the 50s that it could actually charge its contributors big bucks for the privilege of having their articles published in Readers Digest. This may explain how it became such a ruling-class propaganda-rag.
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