The Mind, not the Eye, of the Beholder ...

Image: Child Stars Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland


The Mind, not the Eye, of the Beholder ...

determines the Image.


EdmontonCTV: Disturbing 'Greta' decal bearing Alta. oilfield company logo ...

• An Alberta energy company has come under fire after its logo was displayed on a decal allegedly depicting a sex act with a female figure who appears to be 17-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg.
• The image shows a pair of hands holding the braids of a female figure from behind. "Greta" is scrawled across her back. Directly below sits the logo of X-Site Energy Services.

Note the weasel words "allegedly" and "appears to be" that offset the dramatic headline.

The decal does not overtly depict sexual activity at all -- It's not even X-rated, but it could be seen as strongly suggestive -- of something or other -- depending on who's looking at it.

The oil company's name (X-Site") is itself suggestive, depending on what value you place on the word "excite"!

So what's it's all about, eh?

So far, all of the news media (clearly desperate for copy sales) are crying sexual assault in the headline, and then waffling in the body of the article:

CP: Cartoon of Greta Thunberg being sexually assaulted on sticker, featuring Alberta oil company logo, draws outrage

Newsweek: Canadian oil company under fire for sexually explicit "Greta" image featuring their logo

I'm not sticking up for anybody here; I just prefer to read news that consists of verified facts rather than sensational innuendo of child abuse, designed more to sell copy than to inform.

If you've a mind to, you can look at the pigtail-pulling hands in the offending image as the kind of thing school boys do, for fun, to girls who wear braids -- and also as a grown-up with other intentions.  I suppose the fact that the girl image is bare-backed is more likely to produce the second conclusion.  

The image is indeed crass and misleading to weak minds. But it could also have carried an important message from entities wishing to dispel the erroneous Biblical image: A Child Shall Lead Them" (Isaiah 11:6) inherent in the whole Greta meme.

It's time folks admitted that Greta is not a child; certainly not in view of Canada's consent laws. The age of sexual consent in Canada is set at 16. Greta is 17.

Not only that, but kids under the official age of consent can legally have sex with kids their own age.

If people are going to get all upset about Greta's innocent image being sullied, then they also need to answer to such things as society's acceptance of Hollywood's brutal and calculated use of teen-aged "ingenues" (which is still going on, I might add).

From Cracked:

• MGM soon figured out [...] that children need pharmaceutical help to work those kinds of hours. It wasn't long before the kids were given amphetamines to keep them going during the day, and sleeping pills to calm them down at night.

One of those children was Mickey Rooney; another was Judy Garland, whose career at MGM began at age 13.

• The kids were expected to work 18-hour days, six days a week, all [the] while looking so wholesome that you could eat cookies off their foreheads.
• MGM kept Garland on a calorie-restricted diet, and had plates of food taken away from her as she sat down to eat in the studio cafeteria. They sent internal memos about her weight gain and how her costumes were fitting. They gave her diet pills, and ordered the cafeteria staff to only let her eat chicken soup until she got skinny. According to the guy she married at age 18, the head of the studio encouraged her to smoke up to 80 cigarettes a day to suppress her appetite.

Judy Garland was dead at age 47.  And MGM survives to this day.  And nobody seems to give a hoot about the child abuse.

Read through the causes of death of these former child actors and guess for yourself how many of them may well have been due to their Hollywood careers.

Even some of the mainstream media are beginning to wonder if Greta is an "indoctrinated child", though they do seem to still want to see her as a child, rather than as a young woman.

CNBC Sept. '19:

• ... lots of observers expressing general alarm at what they see as an indoctrinated child being coerced by adults to make their political arguments with her youth as a shield from any criticism.

CNBC makes a good point, but anyone who needs to continue to refer to Greta Thunberg as a "child" in order to make her message seem more powerful, are doing the same thing as MGM did (still does?) to its child stars.  She is clearly backed by money makers who are getting rich producing "climate friendly" alternatives. And that does, indeed, include her own parents.

It's not at all beyond the realm of possibility, given her diagnosis of Asperger syndrome, that she is sustained by pharmaceuticals of one sort or another, accompanied, no doubt, by prodigious pep talks. But she's not an unusual case ...

There have been parents like that forever. Check out the stories of modern Hollywood moms and their movie star kids. The glory lies more with the moms who are bravely:

• Managing Motherhood, Marriage, Business & Blogging Between the Kids' Auditions...

Nobody seems to know where the "X-site"/Greta image originated.  At this point, we should consider that it could just as easily have been her backers intending to show how evil the oil companies are and to garner even more sympathy for Greta's professed cause.

So far it seems to be working.

With regard to Greta personally, the most we can be reasonably certain of is that there's much more to her complete story than is allowed to meet the eye.

So far there's no indication that she is being seriously abused. Her underfed, waif-like (and therefore sympathy-drawing) appearance may be the result of her self-chosen (we hope) vegan diet.

Image: Open Democracy