I Say It's Spinach And I Say To Hell With It

Last week, I expressed reservations with "Not One Damn Dime Day", the effort to protest the reinauguration of Bush by not buying anything. Cultural critic Mark Dery offered up an even harsher assessment on his blog, Shovelware, asking, "Why, as a fellow traveler who heartily agrees that our ill-conceived adventure in nation-building has become a slaughterbench for army reservists and a recruitment tool for jihadis, do I find myself so wildly irritated by this thing?" Among the many reasons:

"Like Buy Nothing Day and Turn Off Your TV Day, it cedes too much cultural territory to the enemy. It's about denial, refusal, withdrawal. It's craven. It's feckless. It gives off the sour stink of defeatism, and self-defeatism at that. This way lies Ted Kaczynski's cabin, the Shaker community, the ascetic's cell. Masochistic at heart, faux protests such as NOMDD Day are the political equivalent of a pillow-biting hissy fit: I'll show them! I'll never leave my bedroom! If they're going to make me eat Brussels sprouts, I'll never eat again, as long as I live!"