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Hooray for the Pepsi Shirt Kid

by Kevin P. Sullivan

From the wrong question department. . .

We all should applaud Evans, Georgia high school student Mike Cameron for disrupting "coca cola day" at his high school by wearing a "Pepsi" tee shirt for a school picture, thusly shining a spotlight on this dangerous tactic of late 20th century neo-fascism. That is - Faustian incursions against public education by predatory global corporations. In this case, that bastion of democracy (you can't sell coke if you sell pepsi), coca cola corporation. Mike didn't even know he was committing a radical act. According to Associated Press, "Cameron says it was just a joke." "From the mouths of babes", as my Mother used to say.

Predictably, the important questions are being shirked in the usual corporate sanctioned talk show non debate.

Questions like. . .

When the schools are economically dependent on corporations like coca cola and nike, how will that influence manifest itself in the curriculum?

How likely will a discussion of coca cola's and pepsi's predatory marketing and nike's slave factory production practices be, if the football team, music department and who knows what else, are dependant on a quid pro quo curriculum for their existence?

Shouldn't schools should be inculcating in these kids an ability to grasp the concept that this logo-ization of education represents the commodification of the student body, beholden to "the company store?"

They don't. Not even a little bit. This would be subversion of the dominant paradigm and is "outside the bounds of the expressible." The WHAT?

More Un-asked Questions

Shouldn't the public school curriculum be such that it encourages and develops the higher order thinking skills necessary in adulthood to avoid being swindled by politicians, preachers and a variety of other snake oil salesmen?

From the Overcoming Consumerism website: http://www.verdant.net/society.htm 

"People become used to the intrusion of advertising into their consciousness in the form of television or the massive bundle of advertising pulp that masquerades as a Sunday newspaper and so they fail to protect themselves, or worse, their children from being seduced by it. Convinced that their self worth is based on $200 athletic shoes or designer clothing, children are already on the road to spiritual dissatisfaction and resentment as well as a perception of diminished self-worth. When they become adolescents they are probably not going to be happy or productive even were they provided with an endless supply of things that few parents could afford. An extreme example of this is when some, usually poor adults, who could often better use the money for education, nutrition and improved housing, demonstrate their self worth and strength of character by turning themselves into human billboards in plastic clothing advertising millionaire's sports franchises. Their children may, to the detriment of education, pin all hopes on an athletic "career", i.e. lots of money for endorsing consumer items. This is nation building?"

What the corporations are buying and the schools are selling here is the student body's attention span. Huh? Schools should be drawing comparisons to Faust, as I am, not emulating it, as they are. What would the world look like if schools did this?

Is such a curriculum likely in a world where schools are dependent on the largesse of combinations of global corporations? Will treaties like G.A.T.T., N.A.F.T.A. and M.A.I. ever be analyzed from a (healthy) point of view? Not enthralled, but suspicious of the motives of global corporarchy.  Not bloody likely. This pepsi tee shirt deal shows how venal and cowardly they can be when it comes to "biting the hand that feeds them." After the picture disruption incident, Cameron was sent to the principal's office, where he said Hamilton "talked about how important that day was to the school and that I might have cost the school 10 grand." Pathetic.

Hostile Forces and more questions

If the schools need more money, and I'm persuaded that they do. Shouldn't it be money unencumbered by dependence on charity from forces hostile to the concept of democracy? The corporations own the political and electoral process. Must they own the schools too?

Instead of, in a mercenary fashion, further unbalancing public school pedagogy in favor of fictional human beings (corporations), why don't we provide some relief for the flesh and blood ones by returning a semblance of equity and proportion to the tax tables. Let's have a discussion about where the money is, about the share of taxes paid by different classes of human beings.. For instance, the share of taxes paid by these legal fiction's called corporations in the "halcyon" days of America has plummeted. In the 1950's, for every on dollar in taxes paid by families and indivduals, corporations paid $.76. By 1992 the rate had dropped to $.21 on the dollar. Hey! That's a lot of $$$$.

Charitable contributions by the ruling class amount to 2% of their income. This does not make up the difference. For some reason this group is rarely pilloried or accused of irresponsibility, it's not even a question in "the liberal socialist media.".

So, when you hear some imbecile wax nostalgically about the "50's" while lamenting the condition of our schools, and the immorality of capitalism's army of surplus labor today (the poor), ask why these facts are not part of the dialogue?

Since there's no question schools need the money, why does this democracy let fictional human beings - corporations - dictate terms to flesh and blood people?

Isn't there another name for a society organized this way?

If it's a republic, it should say out loud who and what it represents, because it certainly isn't We The People.

Oh yeah, one more thing, that kid should definitely get a college scholarship. We really need to encourage this sort of behavior. 

Sunday, March 29, 1998