This may have already been posted, but that's a risk I'm willing to take to share this article, which will further drop your faith in humanity. Apparently corporate songbooks used to be a thing. Can you imagine your feelings while joining hands with your coworkers and singing songs about your CEO, like this? http://arstechnica.com/business/201...astonishingly-insane-1937-corporate-songbook/ Much more via the link.
This is ridiculous. I worked at Wal-Mart, and never did the cheer. It is managers & employees who have fun with it that tend to do it. You don't even need to go to the meeting most of the time, as you can be doing actual work instead.
Being cool wasn't always as important or immediately urgent as having a literal roof over your literal head or placating the people who provided it.
Sheet music was a really, really big deal through the 1950's, before really high quality tape recording. Sheet music and pianos in the living room. Songwriters like Cole Porter were more famous than performers. When you factor in the different way people viewed music then, this makes much more sense.
That's a pretty simple cheer if it's just spelling the name and saying 'My Walmart'. Although very awkward.. I wouldn't consider that soul-sucking, in comparison to the examples from the OP. ^Ottomaton's point is well taken, but anytime you're singing about the infallibility and benevolence of the CEO, or your managers, that's got to feel odd. A line is crossed, there. Another good point made in the article is that a lot of this spawned in the Great Depression era, where people really did feel like they owed their lives to their employers.
It works. Kim Jung Il and Stalin can vouch for it. I've talked with IBM consultants. Feel kinda bad for those mofos, but I never tell them they're greasy and slimy as hell and those b****es get what they deserve.
One other thing - in the 1920's "propaganda" didn't have as negative a connotation as now. At that time, mass production of media was essentially completely new. WWII and the Nazi use really highlighted it's potential for misuse and manipulation. Goebbels, and people like Leni Riefenstahl are synonymous with that change. Propaganda was a neutral term, possibly even positive (See the Technocracy Movement and their total faith in the ability of science and technology to make the world better) After Goebbles, and the above mentioned Stalin, and his disciples, it has acquired a whole lot of baggage that didn't exist then.
