Dis Capital WHEN ANDY COX (http://www.sirius.com/~andycox/hasta.htm) SPENT $798 DOLLARS ON AN AD-CAMPAIGN CRITICIZING OUR ECONOMIC SYSTEM, HE TRAMMELED ONE OF THE LAST TABOOS OF OUR LOOSE-LIPPED ERA. BY HEATHER CHAPLIN Unless you've been in a coma, there's one very important lesson you should have learned this year. And that is that there is almost nothing that can't be discussed in public. Not to worry, this isn't an article about Monica Lewinsky. No, I'll just say that CNN's seven-month, 24-hour analysis of our president's apparent taste for oral sex -- besides grossing me out thoroughly -- made it clear that forbidden topics of discourse are going the way of the dinosaur, the gaslit lamp and the tuna casserole. Or are they? I ask because a group of San Francisco artists last month seems to have hit upon something more shocking, more out of the ordinary, more scandalous than even Geraldo's crew of analysts, strategists, commentators and assorted gold diggers would discuss in their nightly rounds of Clinton dishing. Dare I mention it? They took out an advertisement that questioned capitalism. Picture this: It's midsummer in a subway station in downtown San Francisco, and the crowd is eager to get home. Office workers and business people are reading their papers, standing in the neat lines that San Franciscans form while waiting for trains, yawning and idly watching the TV monitors that hang along the platform. The monitors announce train arrivals, run local news teasers and show commercial advertisements. But not this time. This time, those looking for the usual black background and white letters that announce their trains see instead the flashing phrase "CAPITALISM STOPS AT NOTHING." One official at Bay Area Rapid Transit thought it was an ad for Forbes magazine -- a teaser to be followed by something like, "Forbes Doesn't Stop at Anything Either." Not everyone was so trusting, however, and a bewildered station agent began to get complaints. The ad -- which was supposed to run for the month -- was pulled. Why a fairly innocuous bit of street art got the ax so quickly is a good question, and no one is jumping at the chance to take responsibility. BART says Metro Channel, the New Jersey company that runs the programming, pulled the plug not because the spot was offensive, but because it was so strange Metro Channel concluded it was an unfinished product put into rotation accidentally. Metro Channel, on the other hand, says it wasn't involved in the decision to pull the ad, but that BART did it because of the complaints it received. And Andy Cox, who masterminded the spot, says Metro Channel told him explicitly that it couldn't run the ad without adding a disclaimer because of its controversial nature. Hmmm. The need for a disclaimer interested Cox, who inquired if Metro Channel always ran disclaimers on its advertisements, as in, "We don't endorse the idea that you need to buy this product to be happy." The answer was no. Metro Channel also wanted Cox to include his group's name on the ad, but after hearing the name, Together We Can Defeat Capitalism, the company chose to run its own disclaimer when it finally reinstated the ad. Cox does not seem the rabble-rousing type. He's a soft-spoken, 38-year-old civil engineer who describes his political stance as "confused." He is not aligned with any political party and said he only wanted the BART piece to inspire some sorely lacking debate. "Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the idea of a society based on equality has evaporated," he said, "and it makes me sad that such a dream has disappeared." Cox, who first ventured into guerrilla art last year with a bus terminal ad spoofing Citibank's "In Your Dreams Campaign" -- his featured a picture of Cuban rebel Che Guevara with the words, "In your dreams everyone is treated equally" -- is fully aware of the kind of baggage the very words "Soviet Union" carry. He's also aware that mocking or criticizing capitalism isn't necessarily going to win him any popularity contests. "It's like it's unpatriotic to even talk about capitalism," he said. Considering the kinds of prickly topics people will talk about, the idea of having a taboo against any topic now seems decidedly, well, un-American. Sex, arguably our longest-running taboo, now dominates public debate -- turn on the TV and Jerry Springer is interviewing the deviant of the week; pick up the New York Times and pundits are discussing the presidential penchant for oral sex; eavesdrop on any group of high school girls and the conversation is raunchier than I care to repeat. It's not just sex and political subjects that have become declassified either. Not too along ago, money was a taboo subject. There was a time when asking someone what they earned would have been the height of rudeness. Now, telling virtual strangers intimate details of your financial life is prime get-to-know-you talk. But the notion that capitalism -- the system that's swallowed and regurgitated the whole of Western civilization into marketable units -- might have its limits has developed the taint of the unspeakable. Which would make you more uncomfortable, your date explaining over martinis the benefits of his stock-option plan or suggesting that drinking $8 cocktails was a questionable habit so long as hunger still exists? In the rare moments when the media isn't pontificating about Lewinsky, they're talking about money too -- how to earn it, how to grow it, how to hide it from the long fingers of the government. There's no longer even a veneer of restraint paneling our national lust for wealth. You're a fool or worse to suggest there's value in working for anything other than personal profit and comfort. When was the last time you saw an article in Smart Money, Fortune or Forbes on how to share the fruits of your bull-market millions? (Articles on charities as tax write-offs don't count.) And while State of the Union addresses invariably serve up syrupy stories about "common" people moving from reliance on social programs (welfare, affirmative action, take your pick) to liberating entrepreneurial success, such stories are almost exclusively heralded as the triumph of free enterprise rather than evidence for the value of compassionate government. When President Clinton gestures, teary-eyed, toward the inner-city teacher who returned to the ghetto after her scholarship years at Harvard instead of taking a high-paying job on Wall Street, we applaud, thankful she's made the sacrifice so we don't have to. Together We Can Defeat Capitalism spent $798 on an ad that did nothing more than question capitalism and immediately it caused a minor news sensation. (I'd like to meet the ad man who's gotten as much value for his buck.) Of course there was the commotion over those Calvin Klein ads, which people complained smacked a little too much of kiddy porn. Klein eventually killed the campaign and issued an apology; the man doesn't want to be associated with pedophilia, after all. At least pedophiles get air time. Journalists love child-abuse stories. But when are we going to see the socialist, the anarchist and the Wall Street broker trading blows -- or at least getting makeovers -- on Jerry, Jenny, Sally or Ricki? Believe it or not, there was a time when socialism, anarchy and communism were important parts of the national debate, each ideology sustaining viable movements and counting significant numbers as members. In 1912 Socialist candidate Eugene Debbs ran for president and received 6 percent of the vote; in 1924, Progressive Socialist candidate Robert LaFollette ran for president and received 16.5 percent of the vote, actually carrying Wisconsin. Anarchy was also a serious movement in the earlier part of the century, not just a big letter "A" on punkers' jeans. But the end of the Cold War and the much-heralded victory of the stock market seem to have caused many Americans to merge the principals of capitalism and democracy into one neat package. Question one and you question the other. And who wants to get branded as an anti-democratic pinko commie? SALON | Aug. 28, 1998 -- Gregory Schwartz Dept. of Political Science York University 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada Tel: (416) 736-5265 Fax: (416) 736-5686 Web: http://www.yorku.ca/dept/polisci
