Commercials are Bad, Mmmkay?

Interesting piece in todays Washington Post about a group called Commercial Alert, an anti-consumerism advocacy group, dedicated to de-commercializing certain arenas in public discourse. On the one hand, I can sympathize with founder Gary Ruskin's antipathy towards the excessive commercialization of our culture, the shrinking sense of shame and privacy. If Commercial Alert can stop more Candlestick Parks from becoming 3-Com Pavilions, I won't complain too loudly.


But why must such efforts always bring the same tedious leftist bag-of-whines with them? Why do these leaders have to ally himself with the anti-globalization nutjobs? Why does the critique of market capitalism inevitably lead to calls for vandalism? And finally, why, when Ruskin declares that certain spaces must be thought of as "sacred and therefore off-limit to peddling wares," (a nicely elitist turn of phrase) can he come up with nothing that should be "sacred" aside from "Governments, schools, and civic institutions"? Is the state the only thing we have left to make sacred?


Yes, commercials are crass. Yes, they can clutter up the landscape and our sense of quiet. A few local ordinances (such as San Francisco's proposed ban on selling naming rights to public spaces) are probably welcome. But don't let's get carried away. Let's not forget that without advertisment, we could never know what is available.