>You think that I should have explained the irony of that graffiti or have
>autowrokers comment. I think the audience is smart enough to figure it out for
>themselves.
How the irony is interpreted depends on the viewer, so I gave two possible alternative readings of the scenes. I happen to think that a nationalist reading is likely to be the dominant one, as things stand now, though as times change, the other reading--irony of workers' nationalism in the face of global capital--might become dominant. You and others might disagree.
Anyway, my comment comes from my desire to see a 'working-class intellectual' like Ben Hamper in a film. Ben might be self-taught as opposed to college-educated, but in my view he's a really smart guy--an intellectual and artist as well as a worker--who has incisive and funny things to say, as I am sure you agree (since you published his columns and wrote the forward for his book).
>Regarding the selection you chose from Ben's book, that was all made up in the
>interests of humor. It never happened. Ben writes in the Hunter Thompson-mode.
>I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Whether the episode was made up or a recollection of a real event is actually irrelevant to my larger point. My point was to celebrate Ben's ironic comment on misguided nationalism of lots of workers, and I think we need to have more representations of American workers like Ben's self-representation (be it 'documentary' or 'fictional'). And you are in a good position to promote representations of workers like that. I think that internationalism can be promoted with humor; we need to do more of this promotion of the labor internationalist message ('workers of the world, unite!') because many associate (superficial) cosmopolitanism with the rich and nationalism with the working class. That's a wrong association that we got to destroy.
Yoshie