Re: Dallas Smythe student (separated at birth?)

["Tom Walker" <timework@xxxxxxxxx>]

What I see that I object to is not so much asceticism as good old fashioned
oppositional smugness. I object to it, though, with some humility. There's a
long tradition of smugness alternating between politically correct
asceticism and bohemian hedonism. For chrissake think of the sixties maoists
and hippies, often the same people at different points in their
hormone-crazed personal trajectories.

Oppositional hedonism and asceticism are mirror images of each other and
together the pair is a mirror image of the mainstream A & H twins. Keep in
mind that the hedonistic and ascetic positions are going to stand out more
than some wishy-washy dialectical appreciation of nuance. To paraphrase
another famous Canadian communications guru, sometime indeed the medium is
the massage.

Doug Henwood wrote,

> What I see in the anti-commercial
> gang is just the kind of asceticism that Mandel criticized in
> orthodox Marxists, though without the class angle.