Well, geez, that’s simple. A “mantra”, in Eastern philosophy, is a sound or phrase repeated over and over again to clear and focus the mind for meditation.
In the last twenty years, we’ve seen a massive rise of “controlling the message” in politics - politicians doing everything possible in interviews and conversations to pull whatever the subject matter is back to a series of simple “talking points”. Watch how Bush turns any question in a press conference back to how we need to stay the course in Iraq; he’s very good at doing that.
As a result, those talking points often get referred to as “mantras”, because they’re simple phrases (“No new taxes!” “It’s the economy, stupid” “Keeping us safe from terrorists”) that get repeated over and over again as a way of clearing the conversation and focusing it on what the politician wants discussed.
Assuming 1000 people died and assuming each person drank 8 oz that’s 125 packets of kool aid, and most likely the same amount of Flavor Aid. Based on case prices I’m coming up with (currently) $0.09 for Flavor Aid and $0.19 for Kool Aid. This gives us a savings of $12.50.
Based on some random site I found, that would be a savings of $4.14 in 1978.
Actually, I haven’t yet seen a 100% reliable cite to resolve the “Flavor-Aid vs. Kool-Aid” Jonestown controversy, and the last documentary I saw on Jonestown (One of the National Geographic Channel’s “Final Reports”) had 70’s footage, apparently from the scene, that showed Kool-Aid packets.
Back when the level of political election newscoverage was a bit less glitzy and/or sophisticated, the major news organizations used big cardboard cutouts of various states to show election returns. But I thought the colors, blue and red, alternated every election cycle - or am I mis-remembering?
Ah! Now it all makes sense: it’s a plot by the Kool-Aid Kartel to push their product. Thanks all. It makes perfect sense, but didn’t this morning, for some reason. Pre-coffee fog, I guess.
As a dues-paying pedant on the SDMB, I have to emphasize this. I don’t know if it was deleted, but I participated in a thread on this board in which I pretty much proved that Flavor-Aid was what was used. The problem was that Americans had hardly heard of it. I never had.
Isn’t Kool-Aid (kool-aid) been down the same trademark dilution path as Xerox (xerox) and Kleenex (kleenex) and Band-Aid (band aid)? We can fairly say that they drank kool-aid in Jonestown, then.
No. Kool-Aid is still a registered trademark. No court has declared it to be in the public domain, nor has the Patents and Trademarks Office declared it “dead”.
It is? Got a cite? I knew that most people like the red “bug juice” best, but I never heard that it was specifically a black thing.
No cite other than something I heard from the black roommate I had back around 1994.