I chanced to see this on Pharyngula. Let’s set aside the normal rigmarole about the Partnership for a Drug-Free America being a pack of mendacious puritans funded by purveyors of liquor, junk food, pharmaceuticals, and other socially acceptable drugs intent on keeping the competition down. Instead, let’s choose to be charmed by their use of the interrobang, that stillborn punctuation mark beloved of tiresome freaks with too much time on their hands. Ahh. Boy, it sure makes me wish my dear old mom and pop had talked to me about drugs before I started stuffing opium-laced hashish up my ass. You know, all it takes is a few minutes “rapping” with your teen about drugs, sex, and voting for Hillary Clinton to make an unshakable impression the impressionable young tot. That impression will be that you’re a clueless old bastard who can’t get it up, but you tried and that’s what counts with these crazy kids today.

Scienceblogs, which is where Pharyngula is hosted, has a long history of unsavory advertising for loathsome causes and companies, a tendency which is shared by your higher-class media outlets like PBS. Normal network television might feature comforting advertising for body spray that turns women into bisexuals or soft drinks that allow you to ejaculate laser beams, but shows like Nova and Christ Jesus, Is Jim Lehrer Still Alive? are prominently funded by such corporate winners as ADM, DuPont, Dow, and Monsanto. It’s a minor dent in their budgets, I’m sure — Dow nets around $4 billion a year, DuPont $3 billion, and that’s profit — but it shines a lovely halo on these companies that will be most influential with the generally pro-science liberals that watch those programs. It cannot be understated how important it is for Dow to be associated with plastics and technological process instead of napalm-scarred Vietnamese children, Agent Orange, and Bhopal.