Boston Legal
I don’t want to sound like a spoil sport — I do appreciate the humor regarding the whole Aqua Teen brouhaha, and especially the way they handled the press conference. And I agree with the general consensus that the authorities who thought <shudder>terrorism</shudder> was to blame were idiots.
But, that said — OnTheCommons points out an angle to the story that I hadn’t seen mentioned elsewhere, on the insidiousness of accepting that the background of our very lives is now a perfectly acceptable canvas for the corporate marketing department. (No offense intended to my friends in marketing : )
They make a particular point of the hypocrisy inherent when the corporation is part of the media cartel working to cripple fair use and other rights of the consumer:
Where is it written that corporations have an automatic right to expropriate any aspect of a city in order to push their products? How come what’s ours is fair game for them, but what’s theirs is not fair game for us?
Which sorta dovetails nicely into a tangentially related thought experiment by Logan to which I wanted to give props.
Certainly some things to think about.
update: …and having done so a little more, here’s why I think I still enjoy and am not bothered by this particular incident, even if I think the article is onto something insofar as principle goes — this stunt strikes me as being something that was done by the creative team (maybe the show’s creators?) rather than by corporate — corporate probably just allowed it, and may not have even known until after. So my inner guerrilla performance artist appreciates the stunt. But the places that corporate teams might take the idea in the future do still scare me.
