Book Report

I just finished reading Naomi Klein's No Logo, which had been sitting around here forever. It's pretty provocative and quite thoughtful. I was interested in what she had to say about consumer branding, but the book really just uses that as a starting point to draw links between the encroachment of advertising into every facet of our lives and our public space and our current "manufacturing system" (if you can call it that) where corporations don't actually manufacture things, but instead outsource that so that we can have third world people in sweatshops working 100 hours a week in dangerous conditions to supply us with Gap t-shirts and inexpensive underwear. From there, she points out how this is related to the death of the traditional employer/employee relationship in the west - as many of us know from personal experience, there's no sense that employers have any loyalty or responsibility to their people or communities anymore.

It's worth a look if any of that interests you (and if I can get on my soapbox for a minute - it should interest you). The paperback edition includes an afterword that Klein wrote in 2002 with some interesting commentary on how 9/11 was being used to suggest that anti-globalization activists were just like terrorists.

It reminds me of a spot from the Daily Show the other night; Stewart played clips from Scott McClellan's contortions trying to explain how the total absence of WMD is No Big Deal, and of course played the 9/11 card repeatedly. "Since 9/11... 9/11 changed everything... in a post-9/11 world..."

Finally Stewart threw up an equation to explain it all:

9/11 + Whatever We Say = Shut Up!

Which about sums up how the Bush administration has been communicating with the public.