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Rabbi Joseph Telushkin

By Luke Ford

On AM 790, KABC, Dennis Prager began his show discussing the following.

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, March 26, 1998; Page A01

Friday was "Coke Day" at Greenbrier High School in Evans, Ga. Yesterday was Mike Cameron day nationwide.

Cameron is the 19-year-old senior who was suspended for one day -- yesterday -- for wearing a Pepsi shirt at a Coke Day rally at his school. Instead of attending classes, he spent much of his day talking to the national media and participating in call-in shows about his plight.

Coke Day was dreamed up by the student government as part of the school's entry in a national "Team Up With Coca-Cola" contest that earns $10,000 for the winning school. In the program, Coca-Cola Co. invites high schools throughout the country, except those that have exclusive contracts with PepsiCo Inc., to come up with a plan for distributing Coke discount cards locally.

All four high schools in Columbia County competed, but "Greenbrier elected to go big time," said Tom Dorhmann, superintendent of the Columbia County Board of Education. That included the rally, in which the students, who were encouraged to dress in Coke's red and white, lined up to spell out the word "COKE" while more than a dozen of the company's executives looked on. Coke has its headquarters 100 miles away in Atlanta.

In recent years American businesses have started reaching out directly to public schools to affect the buying habits of young people for everything from potato chips to sneakers. In the highly competitive soft drink market, some schools have signed contracts agreeing to exclude a competitor's product in exchange for cash payments.

But having programs such as Coca-Cola's takes the commercialization to another level, Marianne Manilov of the Center for Commercial-Free Public Education said yesterday. "From where we sit this is out of hand," she said. "The school door has been thrown open to marketers."

According to Cameron, he had worn his Pepsi shirt all day but didn't get in trouble until it was time for the picture. "I was standing in the middle of the 'C' with my arm around my girlfriend," he said. The photographer was above the group on a cherry picker for an aerial shot.

Dennis Prager decried the growing power of big government and big business. He said it diminishes individuality.

DP felt sad about the growing number of sport stadiums named after companies.

DP learned from a caller that government money is more coercive than private money.

Prager claims that he has never worn a T-shirt with advertising.

DP does not like Tiger Woods wearing a Nike hat. Didn't CBS sports guys wear a logo?

Prager does numerous adverts - for Tower records, for Ducks (sp?) bed, etc…. A caller challenged Prager: What is the difference between wearing a T-shirt for Coke, and Prager reading a commercial for Coke?

DP said listeners could tune out of his reading an ad.

DP says that the anti-smoking forces are the least committed to truth of any advocacy group he knows.

Prager likes Coke. It is good for an upset stomach. Coke did not do business with the Soviet Union like Pepsi and did not give in to the Arab boycott of Israel like Pepsi.

Prager got hammered for his hatred of the anti-smoking movement. DP says folks know the risks of secondary smoke and that he opposes further government regulation on the matter. DP ridiculed the growing opposition to cigars.

How come the government has ads for gambling but against smoking?

How come no ads against male-male anal sex?

A caller noted how tired many of us are of tired of Prager always lambasting the anti-smoking movement. The caller said that he was listening to Prager in his car, sitting with a friend. And when DP got on secondary smoke, the friend punched the button to change the station, because both guys were so tired of Prager repeating himself on this topic.

Prager claimed that he only talked about this topic four times a year, which is laughable. He talks about it on average 30 minutes a week.

Dennis Prager laughed heartily at this George Will column in the 3-29-98 Washington Post:

Sorry, So Sorry

By George F. Will

Sunday, March 29, 1998; Page C07

SOUTH POLE, Jan. 19, 2001—President Clinton today apologized to Antarctica.

Speaking to an audience composed of the traveling press, Clinton said he repented of America's "sin" of neglecting this continent except when America paid a kind of improper attention to it. He regretted that during the Cold War, U.S. policy "subordinated the true interests of Antarctica to geopolitical calculations arising from the conflict with the former Soviet Union."

Last year, Mr. Clinton apologized to Russia for U.S. policies which he said caused the collapse of communism. He said this diminished the world's political "diversity."

In words barely audible here over polar winds, Mr. Clinton expressed regret for the "insensitivity of American stereotyping." He said that "for too long American ethnocentrism and cultural chauvinism have caused us to think of Antarctica only as a cold and icy place."

Mr. Clinton praised the recent decision of San Francisco authorities to require high school students to read at least one novel from "the canon of Antarctic classics." America, he said, is "a gorgeous mosaic of multiculturalism" and should be ashamed of educational practices that "through centuries of cultural oppression, have privileged European contributions to art and literature over the contributions of others."

"We must not fear differences," Mr. Clinton said. "We have extended curriculum recognition far, but you can never extend it too far. Now it is time for inclusion of snow and ice."

Mr. Clinton, who has been traveling outside the United States every day since the middle of March 1998, came to this frozen setting to complete what he calls "this tour of tears." Aides say that Mr. Clinton, who has spoken often of his "legacy," believes that history will remember him not for pioneering new dimensions in executive privilege, but for his "foreign policy of creative contrition."

The policy was born in Uganda on March 24, 1998, when Mr. Clinton, for the first time, apologized to an entire continent in one fell swoop. In Uganda, which in the 1970s was governed by Gen. Idi Amin, Mr. Clinton encouraged Africans to dwell on the foreign sources of their sufferings.