Progressive Commercialism Justified!

By -
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
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Snarking The Odyssey (with AD&D)

By -
Image
WARNING: Those of you who are accustomed to pithy political remarks here on Internal Monologue should brace yourselves for a major dose of gaming geekitude. Here's a link to one "Jamie R." who does a very snarky close reading of Homer's The Odyssey (HT: Mad Latinist via email). I've only read book 1, but it's pretty funny so far. An excerpt: Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men… Sooooo, he’s in charge, and everybody dies. Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero and his colossal failure. What? … for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever rea
Read more

Where is 56th and Wabasha? "Meet Me in the Morning" Dylan Mystery Solved

By -
Image
Short version The lyric is not "Fifty-sixth and Wabasha", it is actually "Fifty-six and Wabasha", referring to the intersection of old Minnesota Highway 56 and Wabasha Street in Saint Paul, Minnesota. If you listen, you can hear Dylan sing "fifty-six", rather than "fifty-sixth", particularly on the take that was released as the B-side to "Duquesne Whistle". Minnesota Highway 56 no longer intersects Wabasha Street, but from 1963 to 1974 it did intersect Wabasha Street, at what is now (in Feb. 2021) the intersection of George Street and Cesar Chavez Street in St. Paul, or possibly South Wabasha & Cesar Chavez.  Long Version "Meet Me in the Morning" is the first song on side two of Bob Dylan's celebrated 1975 album  Blood on the Tracks. In the opening lines of the song, according to the lyrics on Bob Dylan's official site (https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/meet-me-morning/), the narrator invites the listener to a rendez
Read more

Victim or perpetrator? How about both!

By -
Remember in the movie Adaptation , the main character's brother has this idea for a screenplay called The Three? It's about a detective trying to track down a serial killer before he kills his next victim. Pretty standard, right? The twist is that the detective, serial killer, and victim, are all actually the same person . Whoa, dude. Fight Club 's got nothin' on that one. Well, this isn't quite that weird. But apparently, Utah legal authorities are somewhat perplexed by a situation in which a 13-year-old girl and her 12-year-old boyfriend are both simultaneously the perpetrators and victims of the same crime: having sex with each other (HT: Feministing ): Utah Supreme Court justices acknowledged Tuesday that they were struggling to wrap their minds around the concept that a 13-year-old Ogden girl could be both an offender and a victim for the same act - in this case, having consensual sex with her 12-year-old boyfriend. The girl was put in this odd position be
Read more