social commentary

Our good friends the Yes Men have just sent along this news release, reprinted here in entirety:

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EXXON PROPOSES BURNING HUMANITY FOR FUEL IF CLIMATE CALAMITY HITS
Conference organizer fails to have Yes Men arrested

Text of speech, photos, video: http://www.vivoleum.com/event/
GO-EXPO statement: http://newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2007/14/c5086.html
Press conference before this event, Friday, Calgary: http://arusha.org/event/7214
Contact: mailto:fuel@theyesmen.org
More links at end of release.

Imposters posing as ExxonMobil and National Petroleum Council (NPC)
representatives delivered an outrageous keynote speech to 300 oilmen

So I was invited to a marketing conference—really, a "futurist" conference, but I'll describe what that means in a moment—and decided to go along the line of thinking that if I'd spent the last six years standing in front of the White House telling passersby we needed to overthrow George Bush and then one day he invited me in for dinner, I'd probably have to go do that too.

A "futurist" conference is sort of hard to describe to, well, anyone I think who does not run one, but the gist is that you gather all these various forces together that represent differing emerging trends, and then you invite people to come witness the emerging trends and suss them out a bit, see what is to be gained from them. And who wants to do that? Mostly, marketers. Other people too, sure. But mostly, marketers.

Here's my question:

I like to think of myself as one of those punks who isn't in it for the image. Sometimes I'll get dressed up for a show or to party, but most of the time, I'd rather just wear fuzzy sweaters (it's cold here in New England, and ripped fishnets just don't insulate).

In any case, I do have a few accessories other than my body mods that I wear all the time to let people know where I'm coming from. I have a sweet pair of giant star earrings and a good colection of t-shirts from concerts.

I also have a Kenneth Cole studded watch that I wear every day, and yesterday I aquired my first pair of eyeglasses - I'm getting old. They were covered through my insurance company (I'm a unionized grad student - workers unite!), and so I got a fairly pricey pair for cheap, I just couldn't resist. Geeky Buddy-Holly-black-plastic with little stars on the sides that match my earrings and my neck tats.

I have been doing some tracks with this MC... he's a great guy, good values pretty much all around... only he likes to use this epithet "FAG" in his songs. To him, its just a word. I pretty much spelled out, to me "no racism, no sexism, no homophobia" is sort of a credo. You wouldn't use the N-word (he's a white MC I should clarify) so don't diss my gay friends with your semantics.

Of course, this presented no problems. He knew I wasn't censoring him, just saying that i didn't want to work together on any tracks that I found ethically or philosophically inexcusable.

My friend, the engineer on the sessions, explained to me that we are in the "post-PC era". Granted, most everyone seems to be younger than me these days... but, did I miss the dawning of a new era?