Progressive Commercialism Justified!

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Just what I needed! A rant by the notorious Kos diarist Hunter in support of progressives selling out and making money! I don’t know if I’d defend commercialism as vehemently as he does, but he’s got a point: wingnuts get paid to shill their ideas. Progressives should at least be in the same ballpark. We’re not even close to being there yet, but we are moving up the economic food chain rapidly. Heck, even I’ve made a whopping $8.52 in ad revenue since putting those Google ads on the site! (With my discount at Games of Berkeley, that is EXACTLY the price of one box of D&D minis!) But apparently some people decry our success as “selling out”. I guess they want us to remain “pure” and “ignored”. Hunter will have none of it, and is not shy about saying so.

Comments

App Crit said…
I don't suffer well the 'selling-out' argument, typically. It reveals the envy of the speaker more than anything else.

One should assume that a favoured author/blogger/singer/athlete/barmaid would only accept monies from organizations that are not at odds with his work.

If one doubts the integrity of an author/blogger/singer/athlete/barmaid, then other arguments should be made.

So the google ads really work?

Cheers
6:00 PM, June 17, 2006
Zachary Drake said…
Yes, the Google ads work, and Google has a good rating from BuyBlue.org. Of course there are the recent controversies about Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, et al cooperating with repressive governments. And also there's the fact that you don't control which Google ads appear. You can ban individual sites from advertising on your site (and I've put a few on my banned list), but you can't ban whole categories (e.g. pro-republican ads)

P.S. I misreported my Google Ad income. It was $8.25, not $8.52. But now it's up to $8.44.
10:05 PM, June 17, 2006
Anonymous said…
This is the same kind of thing faced by teachers, social workers, and non-profit workers. They are made to feel like "sell-outs" if they want to make a living doing what they do best. Totally unfair. No one would ever tell doctors or lawyers that are sell-outs for wanting to be appropriately compensated for their services. I dream about a society with a more equal distribution of resources, too, but in the meantime I have to pay rent and put gas in my car like anyone else.
2:45 AM, June 18, 2006
Anonymous said…
Rent is a great source for the wealth == evil attitude. I mean there's Mark's obvious struggle not to sell out, but also Bennie, even when he uses his money to do the right thing (e.g. pay for Angel's funeral) gets nothing but $*%@ from the other characters.

That philosophy really annoys me. Probably because I'm a not-exactly-poor liberal myself.
11:01 PM, June 19, 2006
Zachary Drake said…
The hilarious thing about Rent is that to see this show celebrating bohemian poverty, one often had to shell out upwards of $60 for a ticket. The irony of this was so heavy that it interfered with my enjoyment of the show. There's no way most of the characters in Rent could afford to see Rent. It celebrated a lifestyle that could not possibly be practiced by a majority of its audience. While some guilty bourgeois folks might think of Rent as some sort of necessary form of self-flagellation, it just made me glad I'm not a starving artist.

Funny aside: I was actually called back to be in the movie version of Rent. I was going to be one of the people in the AIDS support group who died. I audition for director Chris Columbus, but I did not get the part.
11:47 PM, June 19, 2006
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