{"id":69,"date":"2004-10-07T21:38:34","date_gmt":"2004-10-08T01:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2004\/10\/07\/how-soon-is-now\/"},"modified":"2004-10-07T21:38:34","modified_gmt":"2004-10-08T01:38:34","slug":"how-soon-is-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2004\/10\/07\/how-soon-is-now\/","title":{"rendered":"How soon is now?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

In March 1990 I saw a tv commercial, which I wrote about as follows in my journal:<\/p>\n

A group of noble and frisky children are trying to “liberate” a good
\ncereal that is hidden away in a dark, impenetrable castle, guarded by a
\ndangerous, huge man dressed in black.  All black, including a
\nhood: he’s the black man, in effect.  The guardian tries every
\ntrick to keep the kids from the treasure — the product that’s being
\nadvertised — but of course the children win out against him, partly
\nthrough luck, partly through Yankee ingenuity and plenty of
\ntechnology.  Finally, the last barrier between the little hero (a
\nboy, of course: did I have to say it?) & the cereal is smashed, and
\nas the little boy rips open a box of the precious cereal — to enjoy
\nthe fruit of his imperialistic conquest — the black man looms up once
\nagain in front of him, in one last-ditch effort to squash the little
\nintruder.  What does the little hero do?  He doesn’t use one
\nof his magic tricks — some gimmick of technology — to kill the big
\nblack man, no, he co-opts him: he disarms him by asking him if he would
\nlike to join him in partaking this wonderful yummie cereal.  And
\nwhat does the black man do?  He becomes white: he’s disarmed,
\nsurprised by the American child hero’s kindness, and he smiles, becomes
\nall friendly, and pulls the black hood off his head, revealing a blond
\n& blue-eyed being underneath.  Perfect transformation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In March 1990 I saw a tv commercial, which I wrote about as follows in my journal: A group of noble and frisky children are trying to “liberate” a good cereal that is hidden away in a dark, impenetrable castle, guarded by a dangerous, huge man dressed in black.  All black, including a hood: he’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yulelogstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}