Thursday, April 12, 2007

I read a great article in the Playboy

Playboy is a great magazine. Underneath all the boobs is a magazine committed to anti-censorship and literacy. This is really the fundamentals I think all magazines should have, but alas they don't. So I choose to read the ones with the values I think they should have.

The first article was good. The basic gist of the piece was that Democrats and Republicans are the same. Neither one care about the fact that the illiteracy rate in Detroit is 50%. Neither one are doing anything about the HUGE imbalance of wealth in this country, or the out and out assault on the middle class. But rather a politician is a politician. It is summed up by the last sentence of the article, "To prefer a Democrat to a Republican is at best to prefer death by a thousand cuts to a good, clean bullet to the base of the skull." Wow! Sort of takes the breath right out of you. Score for Curtis White. It makes me want to read his book, The Spirit of Disobedience: Resisting the Charms of Fake Politics, Mindless Consumption and the Culture of Total Work. Of Course the title doesn't hurt anything either. I can hear it softly calling my name.

Second article, literally right next to the previous one I didn't even have to turn the page to get to more substance that I really care about. This one is about "Going Postal" this bizarre American phenomenon. And rather that talking about how outrageous and scary it is which I am in no way interested it speaks of the fact that it is perfectly normal. Of course it is, why shouldn't Americans be pissed that steadily our work environment is getting smaller and smaller, i.e. cubicles rather than offices? Why shouldn't we be pissed off that in the last twenty years we have received a six cents increase in pay adjusted for inflation for working the same jobs. Why shouldn't we be pissed off at the out and out assault on the middle class. We work harder and longer than anyone in the first world. But luckily everyone else in the first world gets health care and vast sums of vacation hours. Americans, as the article so poignantly put it, should be revolting in the streets. Revolution is eminent, right? Nope. We don't say a thing. Instead it festers until one day you come in to your shitty job and blow your boss to bits. Well, I'm pissed. I have successfully hated every job I have ever had to the point of combustion. This article told me it was perfectly normal. Right on, Mark Ames.

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