I've been meaning to read No Logo for ages.  But you know, that's the kind of thing a person says when they think they ought to read something, but they don't actually want to, isn't it?  Funny, that.

Okay, I admit it.  I ended up skimming this heavily.  Which isn't anything against Naomi Klein or her book.  It's partly (partly) because so much of what Klein had to say in No Logo has been disseminated so effectively to the culture at large.

Klein focuses on the emergency of "brand identity" as something that has value, as if brands were an actual thing that's being sold.  We all know (don't we?) that brands are meaningless, except for the meaning that we impart to them.  Nevertheless, I continue to see protestors attacking companies, when what they really need to do is address the people who buy into that company's brand identity.  

For example, the gun owners who have started wearing their holstered guns into Starbucks.  They aren't protesting Starbucks; Starbucks is just a store that sells coffee.  They're protesting the people who have imbued the Starbucks brand with meaning other than "a place to buy coffee."  Starbucks becomes the focus of people's hate, as well as of their love.  Both of which are equally absurd.

The same thing can be said of the "anarchists" who smashed storefronts during the Seattle and various other WTO protests.  Breaking in the window of a Starbucks doesn't strike a blow for freedom of mind or expression; it just breaks a window.  In other words, Starbucks isn't the problem; we are.

Last September my television died, and I wasn't in a position to replace it right away.  I gave myself permission to buy another one, but I just haven't.  Between Hulu and, you know, real life, I just haven't felt the need to get a proper television.  However, some friends gave me a little 13 incher which I pull out for important events, like the season premier of Lost.  

Whenever I watch television now, unaccustomed as I am to the endless commercial breaks, it strikes me as both shouty and a colossal waste of time.  Why spend 30 minutes watching a 21-minute episode of The Daily Show?  And at least half the commercials about food which will kill you, like McDonalds' latest beef-related atrocity.

It is this intrusion into public and private space that Klein is decrying, and well she should.  Every day some bastard figures out a way to sneak an ad into a new location.  Remember when cash register receipts were blank on the back?  Me too, but only vaguely.

I appreciate Klein's call to arms, and I wholeheartedly agree that ads and an overweening sense of brand identity are bad.  But Klein makes the same mistake as those WTO "anarchists."  She blames the corporations, instead of the people who feed them and allow them to run free.  Which is to say, us.

It's a hard truth to sell, that we are the problem.  But I'm afraid that doesn't make it any less true.