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.
