UPDATED: Turns out the email from “Adbusters” below was actually from another group. See my follow-up blog post for details.
So I got this email from Adbusters Magazine this morning:
What made this crass attempt to commercialize the crashed-and-burned OWS movement even ickier was that it recently followed this:
When I asked how much writers would be paid for their 50-300 word intimate confessions of their deepest, darkest psychic and psychological secrets, the answer came back: “nothing.”
Really.
Let’s sum up: Adbusters wants us to pay them money. While they pay workers — and writers are workers, especially when they’re working for a magazine that retails for $12 — nothing.
Please explain: What, exactly, is the difference between the Koch Brothers and Adbusters? Answer: The Koch Brothers don’t expect workers to work for free.
If the publishers and editors of Adbusters didn’t pay themselves anything, I might not bring this up. But that’s not the case. Which means they’re exploiting writers — emotionally fragile writers to boot! — for their own gain. There were divisions within the movement, but everyone would agree that this is NOT what Occupy Wall Street was/is about.
WTF?
4 Comments.
Ted,
As a visual person, do you think the “iconic” image of a ballerina on top of a bull is, um, “powerful?” To me, it seems like a really bad mixed metaphor. A ballerina stinks of privilege and wealth, a form of dance that remains, for the most part, strictly the domain of the 1%. Additionally, although some sports empower young women, the ballerina’s idealized body (the end result of thousands of hours of practice) is Euro-centric.
And what’s she standing on? A brown bull. Where are the hystericals screams for the OWS crowd to be beaten to death with folding chairs?
More proof that OWS was a joke. What’s next? “OWS: The Sitcom”, starring that red-haired loser from That 70’s show and Henry Winkler as his conservative dad. The inter-generational hijinks in this show means fun and laughter for the whole family!
I wouldn’t say it’s proof that OWS was a joke. I had numerous criticisms of OWS, especially it’s reformist tendency and the infection of militant pacifism, but OWS was/is a defining moment in the post-2008 reality. We have not seen the end of radicalism in the 21st century, and we will look back at 2011 as a watershed moment in the struggle to emancipate humanity.
Good points, Ted. OWS brought many to see for the first time the huge gulf between those who own and operate the US/global economy and the neo-feudal vassals whose labor is barley compensated. Adbusters is to be praised for its early (not the first) advocacy for Occupy, as well as for its consistent and long time anti-consumerism.
The magazine does teeter on the edge of being activist porn, of becoming a kind of trade mag for leftist adventurists. The glossy, photo rich publication can at times be cloyingly romantic and suffers from a certain same old same old issue after issue.
OWS failed to break out of the approved “free speech zones” to which it was very quickly confined. This allow the major media and far too many armchair progressives to snipe at the occupiers and redefine them as filthy failures. The success of OWS lies in its cracking the door a bit. What remains to come is a transformational struggle that endless meetings shall not define or contain.