Think those are noble causes? We agree. But the same crafty amoralists who stoke the global warming engine of automobile sales have long had their hooks in “Mother’s Day.” Today, it’s enough for the Steven Harpers and George W. Bushes of this world to buy mom a flower or take her out to dinner. That lets them off the hook for another 364 days of warmongering. That excuses them to peel another dollar out of daycare or child nutrition programs.
We present this pong on Mother’s Day as a reminder of how insidious those “artists with nothing to say” can be. Never forget, the same ad agency that GM has relied on since 1914, the Campbell-Ewald company, was a prime recipient of $US 194 million in secret p.r. funding to bolster the U.S. President’s image. Don’t trust them. Don’t believe them.
As Ruth Rosen (professor in Davis California) writes,
In 1913, Congress declared the second Sunday in May to be Mother’s Day. By then, the growing consumer culture had successfully redefined women as consumers for their families. Politicians and businessmen eagerly enbraced the idea of celebrating the private sacrifices made by individual mothers. As the Florists’ Review, the industry’s trade jounal, bluntly put it, “This was a holiday that could be exploited.”
The new advertising industry quickly taught Americans how to honour their mothers – by buying flowers. Outraged by florists who were selling carnations for the exorbitant price of $1 apiece, Anna Jarvis’ daughter undertook a campaign against those who “would undermine Mother’s Day with their greed.” But she fought a losing battle. Within a few years, the Florists’ Reviewtriumphantly announced that it was “Miss Jarvis who was completely squelched.”
Since then, Mother’s Day has ballooned into a billion-dollar industry. Americans may revere the idea of motherhood and love their own mothers, but not all mothers. Poor, unemployed mothers may enjoy flowers, but they also need child care, job training, health care, a higher minimum wage and paid parental leave. Working mothers may enjoy breakfast in bed, but they also need the kind of governmental assistance provided by every other industrialized society.
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!
Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies [emphasis mine –ed.]. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking
with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be
taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach
them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country will be too tender of those of another
country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From
the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says “Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance
of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons
of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a
great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women,
to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the
means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each
bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a
general congress of women without limit of nationality may be
appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at
the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the
alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement
of international questions, the great and general interests of
peace.
Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870