Propagandizing against you with your own tax dollars

Nanny-state intrusion into people's lifestyles?  Check.

Demonizing of corporations? Check?

Pandering to a faux surge of self-absorbed phony bohemians? Check.

A government agency taking ideological sides?  Check.

This story's got 'em all:

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is spending nearly $5 million to get hipsters to quit smoking by starting “commune” dance parties in bars across California.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) are using taxpayer dollars to bring anti-tobacco marketing into bars by selling posters and t-shirts, including those that deride the views of neoconservatives, saying the political philosophy is as bad as world hunger.

The $4,904,466 grant was awarded in 2011, and runs through 2016.

“In our prior research, we identified a high-risk subpopulation of young adults in San Diego, CA: the ‘hipster’ subculture, a group focused on the alternative music scene, local artists and designers, and eclectic self-expression,” the grant explained. “We developed a yearlong pilot social branding intervention to decrease smoking among this group, using social events and social leaders to promote a strong nonsmoking lifestyle.”

Pamela Ling, a professor at UCSF School of Medicine, is leading the project. Ling was the “medical student who got her way” in the 1994 season of MTV’s “The Real World” before becoming a doctor.

Now Ling wants to help UCSF’s Center for Tobacco Control Research create a “smoke-free world” by appealing to hipsters’ concerns about “social justice.”

“Saying ‘Smoking is bad for you’ isn’t relevant to them,” Ling told the University. “But they do care about self-expression and social justice.”

For the NIH study, Ling partnered with Rescue Social Change Group, a company that tries to alter youth behaviors through social branding, to start “the Commune.”

The group holds events, known as “Commune Wednesdays,” every month at bars in San Diego, San Francisco, and Burlington, Vt., trying to appeal to hipsters through artwork, alternative bands, and Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Aw, ain't that nice?  Flatter the ninnies and beat up on the pro-freedom-and-common-sense crowd.

This is rich, isn't it?  Government money being used to perpetuate the notion that there is some kind of viable "alternative" arts world.

I wrote for an "indie music" website for over a decade, and I can tell you that the only thing "alternative" about that world is the big badge it wears that says, "We're not Columbia, Warner Brothers and EMI."  Believe me, all these "hipsters" want to make it big every bit as much as the acts that strived to get signed to those labels in their heyday.  They've just set up their own infrastructure for peddling their product. They live for the day a few bars of one of their tracks is heard on a TV show episode.

But it makes for a nice segue into corporation-bashing generally:

“We have rejected big corporations for a long time, like Big Music that hinders creative freedom and Big Fashion that runs sweatshops,” the group’s website, “Join the Commune,” explains. “Our stand against Big Tobacco is even more important, since the industry contributes to things like world hunger, deforestation, and neo conservative policies.”

“Even worse, the tobacco industry’s pervasive marketing in the art and music scene has manufactured an image that people like us smoke,” it continued. “So now young people that look up to us believe that smoking is more important than creativity, music and self-expression to fit in. We’re out to change this distorted image of the scene.”

Check out the narcissistic alternatives to a ciggie suggested by this "commune" outfit:

The group sells t-shirts and posters with anti-tobacco messages. One poster offers alternatives to hipsters wanting to take a smoke break, including “riding your fixed gear bike,” “styling your sweet mustache,” “practicing your next Instagram pose,” “listening to your favorite band that no one else has heard of,” and, surprisingly, “taking a refreshing shower.”

For crying out loud.  How many of these "hipsters" are mush-brained enough to take the bait?

I guess they probably have done research that concludes this bunch goes in for extermination of fetal Americans, paying lip service to lifestyle changes deemed necessary to stave off "climate change," and "equal rights," whatever that is (presumable the "right" of homosexuals to "marry").

“Altria (makers of Marlboro) is the third largest political contributor in the U.S.,” reads a poster fashioned off a campaign style ad. “Millions of dollars from cigarette consumers are used to get conservative politicians elected. The tobacco industry’s millions support politicians who vote against equal rights, women’s right to choose, and environmental protections”

“Your money. Their policies. You decide,” it said.

Jack Kerouac is rolling over in his grave.