Counter-Currents
1,149 words
News reports this week announced that the iconic Gerber baby, the Michigan-based baby food company’s ad symbol and product label familiar to generations of young parents, is being replaced or supplemented by a new face more in keeping with the times—that of an American Mestizo child.
The exact status of the replacement baby remains vague. Though some accounts state that the traditional logo will remain the company logo (“for now,” according to the Left-wing Huffington Post), most major news headlines variously refer to the Amerindian child as “the new Gerber baby,” “the new face of Gerber,” or proclaim that “the original face of Gerber baby food passes the torch to new model.”
From Tanners to Canners
The Gerber Products Company is still headquartered in small, white Fremont, Michigan where it was founded.
The Gerber family came to Fremont in the 1870s. “Gerber” means tanner. It is the German equivalent of the English surname Tanner; both derive from the occupation of leather tanning.
Frank D. Gerber, who co-founded the predecessor company, Fremont Canning (the name was changed to Gerber in 1941), was born in Michigan in 1873. His father in fact owned a tannery, where Gerber began work at age 16 before joining his dad as a partner.
In 1901 Gerber and his father co-founded the Fremont Canning Company to can local farmers’ crops. They closed the tannery four years later. When his father died in 1917, Frank Gerber became president of the canning company, which by then had annual revenues of $1 million.
From Canning to Baby Food
Gerber’s son Daniel joined the firm in 1920. By 1927 Daniel and his wife had a 7-month-old daughter, Sally, who needed strained fruits and vegetables for her diet. Tiring of doing the time-consuming task at home, Daniel’s wife suggested that it might be done more efficiently at the plant.
Daniel took the idea to his father, thinking it might be possible to manufacture and sell such a product to other young families as well. The two men experimented with pureed produce between 1927 and 1928 before launching the baby food line commercially.
In the process they stumbled upon, or created, a heretofore unknown market in the classic manner later described in theoretical terms (i.e., not about Gerber specifically) by Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek, who identified “competition as a discovery procedure.” (See, e.g., “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” 1945.)
Hayek’s formulation remains a key economic insight, since most intellectuals take production and the existence of a massive pool of social wealth as magically given—which they are not. Completely unfamiliar with poverty or shortage, they are convinced the only question is how to divvy up existing wealth from a purely rationalist, non-empirical ideological standpoint.
This is not a small thing to get wrong. It can lead to massive political and social problems.
Within six weeks Gerber Strained Foods attained national distribution to at least some degree, and within six months enjoyed full national distribution. Within a short space of time the Gerbers had created the new US industry of commercial baby food.
By 1941 consumer demand reached a million cans per week, and exceeded adult foods in the production lines. The company dropped its adult foods altogether by 1943 and changed its name from Fremont to Gerber Products, since by then it was devoting itself solely to baby foods.
The company was ideally situated to benefit from the post-World War II baby boom, and adopted as its motto “Babies are our business . . . our only business.” It still controls 83% of the US baby food market.
By 1980 members of the Gerber family, though no longer active in day-to-day operations, still controlled 20% of the company stock. In 1994 Gerber was absorbed by a multinational firm which in 2007 sold it to Swiss-based Nestlé, of which it is now a subsidiary.
The Original Gerber Baby
In 1928, concurrent with the launch of the baby food line, Fremont held a nationwide contest to find a face to represent the company’s new products in its ad campaigns.
Entries poured in from across the nation, some of which were elaborate oil paintings.
But the judges fell in love with a simple charcoal sketch by a Connecticut artist named Dorothy Hope Smith, who specialized in children’s drawings. (E.g., Don’t Kill Her Daddy With Careless Talk. Hey, Dad shouldn’t have been traveling half way around the world to murder other people in the first place.)
Smith had offered to finish the sketch if she won, but the judges insisted that the simple illustration remain a sketch.
The identity of the baby was not revealed until 1978. A nationwide poll showed that people believed the Gerber baby to be Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, Ernest Borgnine, or even Senator Bob Dole.
The true identity of the child, however, was Anne Turner Cook, the daughter of Texas-born New York magazine illustrator Leslie Turner, later the writer-artist of the popular syndicated comic strip Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune, about a chivalrous Southern adventurer in the classic adventure-hero mold.
Anne Cook, who turns 85 this month, became a schoolteacher in Florida. Following her retirement she published two mystery novels about a female sleuth named Brandy O’Bannon.
The Gerber Company notes,
The image of this happy, healthy baby was soon to become the face that launched a brand, a face recognized and loved across the globe. Indeed, the illustration became so popular that the Gerber Baby has appeared on all Gerber packaging and in every Gerber advertisement. The face has come to represent Gerber’s commitment to happy, healthy babies all over the world.
Race Replacement
The new company model, selected from among 308,000 entries in a nationwide contest, is Mary Jane Montoya, the 8-month-old daughter of Sara and Billy Montoya of Fresno,California. The parents have been awarded a $50,000 cash prize and $15,000 for taxes.
Receiving the torch: 8-month-old Mary Jane Montoya with parents Sara and Billy Montoya of Fresno, California
The racial significance of the change, though not explicitly mentioned by the company or the mass media, was apparent to everyone. Indeed, there was a conspicuous element of implicit racial triumphalism in news reports.
Whether the Establishment media’s wish is father to the thought, or accurately reflects a permanent change in Gerber’s image, remains to be seen.
Nevertheless, it is part of an ongoing process.
After Minneapolis-based General Mills similarly transformed its famous Betty Crocker logo from white to mestiza in 1996, a Jewish (I assume) lesbian professor of Women’s Studies, Linda Heidenreich (at left in photo), celebrated the insult to whites while still grousing that it wasn’t nearly enough.
Even the achievement of total and permanent ethnic cleansing won’t satisfy her ilk.
Whites will ultimately have to imitate Jews and government if they are to survive: pay people well to hate, like Washington State University’s Linda Heidenreich, while simultaneously pitilessly smashing into a bloody pulp anyone who resists.
Jews and the Left define the rules of this genocidal conflict. We have no choice in the matter.
It’s live or die.
20 comments
Interesting that media in Latin America bends over backwards to avoid mestizos and other non-Whites in advertising. They consistently pick people clearly of European descent only. When casting for these acting jobs, the euphemism in the help wanted ads is “people of good presence”; everyone knows what this means: White people wanted; others need not apply.
This is even true in in Latin American countries in which the population is perhaps 80% to 90% mestizo, mulato, African, or Amerindian (such as Peru, for example). The models on TV and other media are nearly 100% White. No one in Latin America seems to mind too much. Only here in North America is this tendency reversed.
This is not only a big nail in the coffin to the obvious, but it is also another spit in the face to any semblance of Roman values we had, most importantly the value of “beauty.”
The Gerber baby was not just a cute white baby. It was the epitome of beauty and cute-ness in a baby. I’m a woman, so trust me. That baby was so freaking cute!!!!
I couldn’t find any pictures of the Gerber baby in her 20s or 30s, but you could tell even at a pretty advanced age, that this was a very good looking person http://tampabaywriters.tripod.com/images/writers/babyjpg1.jpg
It’s not even just about white vs minority, or the altar of PC nonsense, although that is mainly the case….but things have turned on their head so much that this stupid concept of “fairness” trumps basic biology to seek what is beautiful. A revolt against nature.
Here is a better of La Nueva Gerber “Bebe” http://a57.foxnews.com/global.fncstatic.com/static/managed/img/fn-latino/lifestyle/660/371/Winner.jpg
I am sure cute babies of all races exist. This kid isn’t one of them. To me, that is even more offensive. Everything is a goddamn lesson- another slave morality cold fish to the face.
And I’m sure Madison Avenue is ready to blow themselves over how progressive they are….until no one buys their high fructose corn syrup laden mushy carrots because this ugly ass baby is akin to putting Sarah Jessica Parker on Maxim.
You’re right – that is not a lovable baby at all. Except maybe to its parents. I’ve seen one or two darling little African chilluns, even. But what were they thinking when they chose a child with such a stupid expression for their products.
Am laughing so hard…..I showed my sisters the new Gerber baby and they didn’t believe me until I showed them an actual article. One of them had a good point….isn’t this baby going to backfire?
Headline: Hideous baby insults and horrifies entire Latino community
I thought the same thing with respect to your point about “Roman values.”
Look, I realize that every mother thinks their baby is “cute.” That’s a healthy mother’s sentimentality; in certain kind of way, she should think something that approximates that sentiment if she is a normal, healthy mother. But to try to IMPOSE THAT– the mother’s understandable tender sentiments for her own– as reality is just absurd. I agree with you; this baby is not that cute at all. It doesn’t mean she’s doomed or a bad person– but yeah, it does feel like some conspiracy where someone is TRYING to make US sensible, HONEST people capable of order and rank– who are not all sentiment and have some grip on reality– into the bad guys because at every moment they tempt us into saying the obvious. It’s like we’re being poked with a stick. The ugly stick! The ones provoking this response out of us– they’re the indecent ones– not us who have some sense of aesthetic priority.
Though, despite what I wrote above about the correct sentiments of a mother, I will say my grandmother relayed a story to me one time about how my uncle (her son) nearly got mixed up with a different newborn. When the hospital staff brought my grandmother the baby who they thought belonged to my grandmother, she told them: “Oh, no! This isn’t my child. This one is much too pretty. My baby is much uglier.”
I couldn’t imagine a woman these days having that type of honesty.
Incidentally, I knew a beautiful girl in high school that was a hideous baby (or appeared that way in the photo of her I saw) so being not so cute as a baby does not necessarily condemn one to ugliness their whole life. Caucasian features, in particular, seem to often morph quite drastically over a lifespan.
But that old Gerber baby was a gem. This just another example of how we have to trade down simply because the year is 2012 or something.
Flavia,
Very insightful of you to pick up so adroitly and unerringly on the aesthetic angle to the story–which I did not mention at all. Funny, also: “this ugly ass baby is akin to putting Sarah Jessica Parker on Maxim.”
Most “Jewish” women who are attractive turn out to be half-Jews (or less), but half-Jew Sarah Jessica Parker is not among them.
I watched an online clip from the Today show where the baby was introduced to the national television audience, along with the parents and Anne Turner Cook.
Sometimes a video or real-life image gives a different impression than a photograph. But my reaction was identical to the readers here—”That is not a particularly good-looking child,” I thought.
The parents seemed very nice and charming and understandably proud in the short segment.
I assume someone vetted them to make sure they weren’t gang members or something. But who knows? Nothing outside the narrow-minded party line is necessary anymore. Everything is 100% predictable and totally controlled.
Thank you, Andrew Hamilton. Now I do feel terribly guilty, although still chuckling at the absurdity of it all. UFASP is totally right, they goad us – with their blatantly ridiculous propaganda to be mean- and by mean, to point out the obvious. That is such a good point.
The child is just a pawn, after all….(Doubtful they are gang members- the mom’s eyebrow’s don’t check out).
By the way, she’s the face of 2013, so this may be a yearly event- which would of course serve to provide us with an entire Rainbow Coalition of Vibrant Vibrancy.
Yes and this is why the Genocide mantra stuff can be misleading. They have no real intention of killing off the White race, they are simply thinning the herd to maintain a white-j elite. Like a tyrant King who smashes the aristocracy to consolidate his power – Today whites in general are that aristocracy that must get culled.
The White caste system like South America/India is exactly what they want.
Insightful point.
Wow, that article by Heidennreich is the ultimate example of cultural marxism. Her hidden assumptions are very annoying such as the term “push-out rates” which reeks of deliberate discrimination. Using the construction ‘most of us agree’ also is a hidden agenda. Who are the most of us? There is another reading as to why non-whites drop out of school. They just can’t do it, but that would require some honesty. Her footnotes are interesting too. Most area from the splcenter. Go figure.
She is an example of the reason I despise lesbian feminists.
Just as an aside. Some white women disliked Betty Crocker because she was so lazy, she couldn’t bake a cake from scratch. Oh the power of advertising and images.
Sweet Jesus this is so depressing.
What’s even more depressing and disgusting is the tone of the comments on the Huff Post site. Not one not ONE of the comments condemns this disgusting little mestizo mongrel baby for what it is : a big middle finger to whitey, who is old, intolerant and can’t die off fast enough for the white-hating white sheeple.
Good luck trying to post there, though. I tried. Go to the comments section and do a command+fin for “mestizo” or “white”. You’ll see what I’m talking about.
– Arturo
crimesofthetimes.com
They delete posts. It’s not worth trying to post there. It’s a shame because there are bound to be some liberal people who are capable of siding with reason– it’s just damned up and hidden from them.
Interesting comments about Sarah Jessica Parker’s less-than-stellar looks.
In the 2005 family drama “The Family Stone,” she is cast as a bit of a black sheep girlfriend, awkward and not very lovable. She even insults homosexuals (unintentionally).
Later in the film, her more lovable sister arrives. Unlike Parker, she is very blonde, and everyone adores her. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Danes.
Once in a while we do get a more realistic representation of reality.
That movie was the worst! I remember the nauseatingly liberal family- SOOO green they wore their scarves to bed, and of course the token gay black boyfriend. But yeah, I never really thought about Claire vs Sarah in that way…I am sure it was just an err on their part. Self deception is a hell of a drug.
@Ted I don’t think anyone is making any qualms about Sandra Oh being attractive. Maybe on Jezebel’s top kick ass females of 2012 or something, but I do remember Maxim outing her, Tori Spelling, and SJP as the top unsexiest women alive……which is frankly fucked up, but again, back to UFASPS excellent point- Hollywood basically forces unkindness upon us through their intense push to change deeply seated biological truths. It’s 2+2=5 all over again……
To these corporate types, money talks.
Whites with babies, boycott Gerber and buy Beech-Nut:
http://www.beechnut.com/
or another company.
Of course, Beech-Nut may one day decide to put an Australian Aborigine or Papuan New Guinean as their ad symbol. Who knows?
Then again, maybe not Beech-Nut:
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/simgad/17831921986221567060
…because this ugly ass baby is akin to putting Sarah Jessica Parker on Maxim.
Thank you. I was wondering if I was the only one who thinks that the horse-face Parker is repulsive. Another over-rated “beauty” is Sandra Oh, who always reminds me of that kid in the mid-1980s movie “Mask.”
And then the new face of Gerber. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect that our masters are trying to desensitize us to ugliness, in order to make alien immigration and miscegenation more palatable.
I searched the essay and the comments in vain for the email addresses of those we could write to and criticize. What is the good of exposing this type of thing without advocating some kind of admonishment to the company officials?
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