{"id":795,"date":"2004-12-26T13:02:57","date_gmt":"2004-12-26T20:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=795"},"modified":"2004-12-26T13:02:57","modified_gmt":"2004-12-26T20:02:57","slug":"part-11-commercialization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2004\/12\/26\/part-11-commercialization\/","title":{"rendered":"Part 11: Commercialization"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>I once gave my niece The Secret Knowledge of Grown-Ups<\/a> for Christmas.<\/p>\n

Prompting her mother, my sister, to say “Next you’ll be giving her The Teenage Liberation Handbook<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

I was mildly impressed, as I had only the barest awareness of such a book, having only seen it lying around while scuffling past some weird Anarchist Collective Presentation and… um… Organization Conference (???).<\/p>\n

But it’s on some spheriod of “Homeschooling”, so it makes sense that the book bumped into her conciousness..<\/p>\n

The problem here is that teenage is the new Bourgeoise<\/i>, and I don’t know who said that and it only covers a few matters. (And I can’t say that I particularly care about any sort of Marxist ramnifications of such a statement.) By that I mean people listen to radio stations of music that they listened to as teenagers, pop-cultural artifacts bought by adults are largely aimed at that market (What is this “O.C.”?), and on and on. Basically, part-time job or not — a lack of responsibilities and a bit of disposable income (due to the lack of responsibilities: ie: free rent) and free time = the pop culture map is dictated by what is sold to a batch of high schoolers.<\/p>\n

It gave me a queasy feeling when I was<\/i> a teenager, easily brushed aside as “angst” and “hormones”… <\/p>\n

In a way, once I realize this factor the whole of public education starts making sense. Questions ranging from: Why am I watching Channel 1? to Why are they herding me into a 90 minute pep assembly? Because it’s not entirely education… it’s something altogether different. It’s cultural indoctrination.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Christmas is for the Children…<\/p>\n

This year’s list of “hot toys” includes the YMCA-dancing Elmo doll.<\/p>\n

I hope nobody gave my niece (or nephews, or other niece) that toy. It is one reason to hate Christmas, by the way, and I guess when she grows up to read “The Teenage Liberation Handbook”… well… I don’t know.<\/p>\n

The arguments that “Christmas is being ruined by secularists” falls completely flat at the first sight of Jesus Christ standing next to Santa on a manger scene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I once gave my niece The Secret Knowledge of Grown-Ups for Christmas. Prompting her mother, my sister, to say “Next you’ll be giving her The Teenage Liberation Handbook.” I was mildly impressed, as I had only the barest awareness of such a book, having only seen it lying around while scuffling past some weird Anarchist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}