By Brian Carnell

Monday, November 26, 2001

If you wanted to emphasize your belief that Americans buy too much stuff, how would you accomplish that? Well, if you were Adbusters, you'd spend a lot of money to buy and ad to air a couple times during CNN's Headline News.

For a group that wants Americans to stop buying so may things, Adbusters itself is not happy that NBC, CBS and ABC continue to refuse to air their ad. You'd think the group would thank those networks for discouraging such unnecessary consumption. Alas, no such luck.

I confess I did my part for the economy with an extended shopping trip on the day after Thanksgiving, replete with completely unnecessary purchases for my wife and daughter. I did try to do my part, however, by passing up on the latest issue of Adbusters which was on sale at a newsstand I happened to pass by.

Anna Quindlen took up the anti-consumerism banner for Newsweek in an article replete with the absurdity of anti-consumerist critiques.

Okay, Quindlen has a point that all this "shopping is patriotic" nonsense is ridiculous, but so is her lament about "how depressing was it to see Afghan citizens celebrating the end of tyranny by buying consumer electronics?" Which really gets to the heart of the matter -- at least in Quindlen's version, anti-consumerism is largely an elitist critique of the unwashed masses who for some reason enjoy their television sets, DVD players, when they should be concerning themselves with the higher minded thoughts that folks like Quindlen would prefer they be thinking.

Quindlen even has the gall to suggest that rather than go shopping, maybe people should donate something to charity. Yeah, because Americans have completely ignored charitable giving over the past few months.

Still the Adbusters version of the anti-consumerist critique takes the cake with its dire warning that,

The average North American consumes five times more than a Mexican, ten times more than a Chinese person, and thirty times more than a person from India.

We are the most voracious consumers in the world...

We live in the richest nation on Earth and, damnit, we're not going to take it anymore! Leave it to the Left to come up with a critique of widespread affluence which openly celebrates the poverty of people living in China and India.

Sources:

CNN Update. Adbusters, November 2001.

Honestly -- You Shouldn't Have. Anna Quindlen, Newsweek, December 3, 2001.

Discuss (2 Replies) | Printer Friendly