The USDA has given $5 million in your tax dollars to a University of Tennessee campaign that tells kids to "Get Fruved." Part of that grant is on display above in a 30-second that implores an unsuspecting college student (who I really hope is calling out a campus SWAT team) to "get fruved—grape style!" Where are ultra-restrictive campus speech zones when you need them?
Fruved is a portmanteau of fruits and vegetables and the campaign—like so many of these things—around awful videos and activites (such as "Join Team Banana").
Via cnsnews.com:
Other fruved.com website pages are still in development and feature an image of fruits and vegetables with the text, "Nothing to see here, yet. You can go Fruve yourself." "Ultimately the project will continue with high school students working with middle school students to develop and implement the project on middle school campuses and then middle school students working with elementary students to develop and implement the project in elementary schools," the Fruved.com website says.
Hat tip: Robby Soave at The Daily Caller.
Am I wrong that this sort of shit gives the sadz? When you tally up the recent spate of government-sponsored "viral" marketing campaigns (such as the awful "brosurance" ads for Obamacare and the ACA GIF bracket contest [see image on right]), it's incredibly hard not to conclude that the Rapture has come and gone.
And then, I remember the past darkly and figure it's gonna be all right. Here's a 1970s-era PSA about "hankerin' for a hunk of cheese" that readers of a certain age will recall while thowing up a little bit in their mouths.
I'm willing to assume that the second cave painting at Lascaux was probably an anti-smoking ad. But simply because insipid official attempts to get us all to eat our vegetables and take out the garbage and not use certain drugs are eternal doesn't make them any less depressing.
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