An appeal to reason in a dark time. |
As we all know, Nike is a terrible exploiter of labor in other countries while advertising themselves here as being the bearer of "authenticity," with products that will put you back in touch with "real life." They even had a series of commercials several years ago about "the revolution," which was basketball when played from the heart and not for love of money. |
I actually don't express contempt for the rank-and-file conservative voters in Kansas. The conservative reviews of the book claim that I do, but by and large I am very respectful of these people. I certainly don't try to make these people sound crazy. In a lot of ways I really respect them. |
I always want to keep returning, in my writing and in my thinking, to the fundamental core fact of our society's exploitative structure. It doesn't matter how wonderful the stock market is doing, or whether we entered a new realm with the rising tide of capital lifting all boats. For the vast majority of all people, it's not that wonderful. |
I think there's great potential for autonomy, but we have to remember that we live in a world where people may have free will but have not invented their circumstances. |
I was in a bad mood when I wrote that. |
In America, we no longer have an institutionalized, organized way of calling business to task - of taking them to account for what they've done - and this is especially true in the cultural realm. |
In the last James Bond movie, the villain was a culture captain, a tycoon of culture, a Murdoch figure. It's not as if people don't know what is going on. |
Iraqis are being targeted at an unprecedented rate. Wary of the ability of police and soldiers to provide protection, civilians are attempting to provide their own security, relying on neighbors and family or hiring armed guards. |
It's curious how this parallels what goes on in academia. In academic fields like cultural studies, there's a lot of emphasis placed on finding and celebrating instances of audience "counter-hegemony" or audience "agency" instances of people not acting in the way that TV or the culture industry tells them to - the idea being that people really do have free will. |
People are born in a certain place, and in a certain society. I don't mean to sound like a determinist, but to think we're entirely free to do whatever we want betrays a certain class perspective. For most people who have to work for a living, and work at jobs under conditions they may not like, it's just not simple when it comes to freedom. |
People understand how, with the concentration of ownership, the things that make up their lives are increasingly under the control of fewer and fewer hands. We see a great, popular demonology of corporate villains that especially tends to focus on the leaders of the culture industry, such as Rupert Murdoch, who is a very widely hated figure. |
Some meetings' minutes are missing. There are a number of gaps. |
The public is becoming more engaged with this project as each new phase starts. We hope to address the very real concerns people have. |
These days, of course, the focus of talk about popular liberation through products is mostly associated with the Internet. I've been collecting computer ads and ads dealing with Internet industries. |