Schiff wrote a number of politically-charged PSAs in the 1950s and 60s with this sort of manipulative, disturbing-- and flagrantly illegal-- set-up.  Anyone, children or adults, who didn't unquestioningly tow the liberal political line about the supposed wonder-working powers of the United Nations and its various agencies could suddenly find themselves kidnapped by Superman in broad daylight off the streets in America, then whisked thousands of miles away and dropped into some third-world slum where presumably he would have left them until they saw things his way. There was never so much as a whisper of a reasonable opposing view in these ads, never any raising of other important questions
that would have challenged Schiff's simplistic, naive and misleading narrative.

With regard to UNICEF, for example, what about long-standing counter-charges that


Quote:

...
the U.N. exaggerates the effect on the health of third world children of its activities. UNICEF’s efforts are effectively insignificant compared to the effect of continuing economic growth in the developing world.  Economic growth delivers dramatic health effects.  It brings cleaner water and improved nutrition which are long proven to be the key factors in improving child health and preventing deaths from infectious disease. UNICEF airbrushes out the effect of economic growth [and] thus seeks to gain the credit.

The following superb BBC FOUR broadcast by Professor Hans Rosling shows how health improved in step with wealth over the last 200 years: "200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers – in just four minutes“:



The main advances in combating disease over 200 years have been better food and clean drinking water.  Improved sanitation, less overcrowded and better living conditions also contribute. This is also borne out in published peer reviewed research.

[Also], UNICEF...has for decades been harming the interests of third world children by buying cheap and known-to-be dangerous vaccines like Urabe strain MMR as well as mercury-laced vaccines like DTP and [administering] them...

[end quote]


Furthermore, what about the argument that UNICEF actually has a negative effect on the long-term interests of children in poor nations by using the media to mislead the world, including PSA ads like this one?  How about the charges of money wastage and inefficiency that have historically dogged the U.N.?  Didn't it ever occur to Schiff that his ever more strident championing of a bloated, unaccountable transnational bureaucracy rife with mismanagement, corruption and incompetence might eventually backfire on him?

Apparently not. None of that would be aired, it wouldn't even be hinted at lest it reveal some very inconvenient reality beneath Schiff's political window dressing.

This bizarre and offensive notion of Superman as United Nations propaganda enforcer over vulnerable, impressionable young kids never sat well with me, even back in the early 1960s.



Last Edited By: alizarin1 Oct 14 13 1:05 PM. Edited 1 times.