Tom Frank and Matt Weiland, Editors
Commodify Your Dissent
Salvos from The Baffler
From the pages of The Baffler, the most vital
and perceptive new magazine of the nineties, sharp,
satirical broadsides against the Culture Trust.
In the "old" Gilded Age, the barons of business
accumulated vast wealth and influence from their railroads, steel mills,
and banks. But today it is culture that stands at the heart of
the American enterprise, mass entertainment the economic
dynamo that brings the public into the consuming fold and
consolidates the power of business over the American mind.
For a decade The Baffler has been the invigorating voice
of dissent against these developments, in the grand tradition
of the muckrakers and The American Mercury. This collection
gathers the best of its writing to explore such peculiar
developments as the birth of the rebel hero as consumer in the
pages of Wired and Details; the ever-accelerating race to market
youth culture; the rise of new business gurus like Tom Peters and
the fad for Hobbesian corporate "reengineering"; and the
encroachment of advertising and commercial enterprise into every
last nook and cranny of American life.
With its liberating attitude and cant-free intelligence,
this book is a powerful polemic against the designs of the
culture business on us all.
Tom Frank and Matt Weiland are the editor in chief and
managing editor, respectively, of The Baffler. They both live in
New York City.
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