{"id":30838,"date":"2013-07-25T15:50:28","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T15:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=30838"},"modified":"2026-02-20T15:09:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T23:09:30","slug":"kooldirectory","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=30838","title":{"rendered":"Drinking the Kool-Aid: A (Partial) 2009 Directory"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Editor\u2019s note<\/strong>: the jonestown report made note every year in its 13 editions between 2007 and 2019 of the numerous articles, op-ed pieces, and commentaries that specifically mention the use of the phrase “Drinking the Kool-Aid,” even if it isn\u2019t the focus of the entire piece. Even though the report suspended the annual listing beginning in 2020, the references continue on a near daily basis in online media sources.<\/p>\n

(The listing below includes several references from 2009.)<\/em><\/p>\n

The expression \u201cdrinking the Kool-Aid\u201d is now deeply embedded into American slang \u2013 often as throwaway and\/or commonly-understood lines in sports, business, and popular culture \u2013 with upwards of a dozen references appearing on news feeds every day. Especially in political arena, the saying has become increasingly weaponized, as partisans on all sides use it to disparage the intellectual capacity and discernment of their opponents.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, there have been several serious considerations of the phrase in several commentaries during the past year, including:<\/p>\n

Becoming A Cult Brand<\/a><\/strong>
\nby Richard Linnett,\u00a0Media Post Magazine, <\/em>1 July 2009<\/p>\n

How To Obtain a Really Devoted Following<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s a foolproof marketing technique – turning customers into slavish, unthinking, devoted followers of products. In other words, zombies. It’s a strategy that can create legions of pod people dedicated to a particular brand, leaving all rivals in the dust. The best customer a brand could have is an actual cult follower.<\/p>\n

Jim Jones and Kool-Aid<\/strong><\/p>\n

Be careful that a larger brand doesn’t steal your thunder: The Jonestown tragedy in Guyana, in which more than 800 members of the Jones cult committed mass suicide, has forever been wrongly linked to Kool-Aid. The popular phrase “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” referring to people who blindly follow authority, is one of the lasting legacies of the Jonestown massacre. And yet the powdered drink that Jones laced with cyanide to kill his followers was not Kool-Aid but a knockoff rival called Flavor Aid, a product of the Chicago-based Jel Sert Company. Flavor Aid still commands a sizeable share of stomach, as marketers like to say. But nobody says “Don’t drink the Flavor Aid,” do they?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bill Ayers Should Avoid “Drinking the Kool-Aid”<\/strong>
\nby Matthew Vadum, American Spectator<\/em>, 19 May 2009<\/p>\n

Retired terrorist Bill Ayers, a kind of folk hero among today’s left,\u00a0had a run-in with\u00a0Washington Times<\/em> editorial staffer Kerry Picket.<\/p>\n

Picket’s encounter with the would-be mass murderer who plotted to bomb a crowded dance hall at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 1970,\u00a0was capturted on video.<\/p>\n

The newspaper reported this about the brief interview with the former associate of President Obama:<\/p>\n

When questioned by The\u00a0Washington Times during a lecture on racism, Mr. Ayers went ballistic. “Did you drink the kool-aid over at The Times or are you okay?” he asked. “What I’m saying is \u2026 do you actually have a mind of your own?”<\/p>\n

Drinking the kool-aid.<\/p>\n

That’s an odd choice of words for Ayers. The expression came from the mass murder-suicide carried out by Jim Jones at Jonestown, Guyana in 1978 when Jones forced his congregation to drink poisoned flavored liquid.<\/p>\n

Like Ayers, Jones was an America-hating\u00a0revolutionary Communist. Jones left the\u00a0U.S. and created what he hoped would be a socialist paradise in the Guyanese jungle. When things went awry, Jones decided it would be better to slaughter his followers than allow\u00a0them to leave. More than 900 people died.<\/p>\n

Jones remained a revolutionary Communist to the end. On an audio recording of the mass murder in progress, he\u00a0can be heard attempting to reassure his followers: “We didn’t commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.”<\/p>\n

Jones used religion to advance Marxism; Ayers uses the academy to advance Marxism.<\/p>\n

Two different homicidal\u00a0activists sharing a common ideal.<\/p>\n

Maybe Ayers’s choice of words wasn’t so odd after all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh mighty iPod Touch, we\u00a0are not worthy<\/strong>
\nby Colby Cosh, National Post<\/em>, 07 April 2009<\/p>\n

There can hardly be a less appropriate popular clich\u00e9 than saying you’ve “drunk the Kool-Aid.” Every time it is used, this phrase at once trivializes the Jonestown mass murder\/suicide of 1978 and slanders a beloved brand that had no connection to the killings. Its use is defensible for only one reason: It captures a particular conceptual phenomenon perfectly, and no equally efficient or attractive alternative exists in English idiom.<\/p>\n

So: I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid\u2026 By which I mean that I bought an iPod Touch a few weeks ago, and have had my first direct\u00a0experience of the legendary “childlike wonder” inspired by Apple computing\u00a0products.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Drinking Kool-Aid not all bad<\/strong>
\nby Susan O’Bryan, Clinton<\/em> (MS) News<\/em>, 02 April 2009<\/p>\n

Have you heard the phrase, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” a reference urging you not to buy into a set of beliefs? It references back to the 1978 mass suicide by Jim Jones followers, who drank a potassium cyanide-laced concoctions at the urging of their leader. The phrase has come to mean, “Don’t trust any group you find to be a little on the kooky side,” or “Whatever they tell you, don’t believe it too strongly,” according to urbandictionary.com In today’s business environment, it refers to the brainwashing of corporate leaders, poisoning water coolers with company rhetoric. In a gentler tone, it means accepting the challenges a company faces, and being part of the solution, not the problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clever or crass?<\/strong>
\nby Steve Lundeberg, Albany<\/em> (OR) Democrat Herald<\/em>, 29 March 2009<\/p>\n

Catchy phrases, even when they’re sort of tasteless, have a habit of working their way into the lexicon; another example is “drink the Kool-Aid,” a term for getting people to buy into one idea or another that comes from the mass suicide at Jonestown.<\/p>\n

Now, I’m as sophomoric as the next guy – probably more than the next guy, as the co-workers who sit closest to me would probably attest – and I’ve never been accused of being a paragon of political correctness, but I would never use the term “going postal” or “drink the Kool-Aid.” Mass murder just isn’t funny to me, and neither is roughly 900 people killing themselves, especially when one of them was a loved one of a good friend of mine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cliche of the day: Kool-Aid<\/strong>
\nby Ray Frager, Baltimore Sun<\/em>, 25 February 2009<\/p>\n

\u2026in which we highlight a well-worn, nonsensical or jargon-laden word or phrase that has been infecting the world of sports broadcasting.<\/p>\n

Today’s phrase: “drinking the Kool-Aid.”<\/p>\n

This description of an uncritical approach to a team can take on different colors, as in someone who is “drinking the purple Kool-Aid” when he takes as gospel anything coming out of the Ravens’ Castle and absolutely believes the team is always headed in the right direction.<\/p>\n

In addition to being overused, the phrase trivializes an awful historical event — the mass suicides at Jonestown in\u00a01978.\u00a0Followers of the Rev. Jim Jones consumed a poison-laced,\u00a0Kool-Aid-like\u00a0drink at the cult’s compound in South America, where more\u00a0than 900 people were found dead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Editor\u2019s note: the jonestown report made note every year in its 13 editions between 2007 and 2019 of the numerous articles, op-ed pieces, and commentaries that specifically mention the use of the phrase “Drinking the Kool-Aid,” even if it isn\u2019t the focus of the entire piece. Even though the report suspended the annual listing beginning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":30843,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-30838","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30838"}],"version-history":[{"count":149,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133855,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30838\/revisions\/133855"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}