[lbo-talk] Re: Free Martha!

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Wed Jan 21 10:09:56 PST 2004


Doug wrote:


>her prosecution is an attempt to legitimate Wall Street

I suppose it is, but does Wall Street need her prosecution to legitimate itself?

Also, it's not like you get to write for _The Nation_ every week. :->

Doug wrote:


>Not just the prosecution of MS, but the prosecution of "insider
>trading" itself. . . Prosecuting insider trading is all about
>evoking that paradise of free and equal exchange - the world of
>liberty, equality, and Bentham, as the Old Man said - which doesn't
>exist anywhere but in fantasy.

Yeah, but didn't you argue for the WTO, on the grounds that "As the results of the ministerial show, the WTO was never really the institution its critics said it was. From the outset, it wasn't really dominated by big capital in the rich countries. It's a one-country, one-vote system, like the UN's General Assembly" (at <http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20031027&s=henwood>)? Presumably, what the WTO (as well as the UN GA) does for legitimation of capitalism and imperialism is analogous to what the prosecution of insider trading does for legitimation of Wall Street: evoking the paradise of free and equal exchange.

Liza wrote:


>What I understood Doug's friend to be saying was not that Martha was
>a "feminist icon" but that her way of being obsessed with the home
>is not a traditionally feminine one, in which the home is
>Christopher Lasch's "haven in a heartless world" (he was of course
>borrowing Marx's characterization of religion) - just the opposite.
>Martha's home is competitive, and it is big business. Nobody's
>saying that's at all admirable, just that it's not traditionally
>feminine and it makes people uneasy.

What of the homes of women who buy Martha products and emulate Martha methods, painstakingly decorating homes and tables, or more likely, just buying Martha products to dream about decorating homes and tables lovingly, not having any time to do the actual decorating? Isn't the effect of the Martha industry an unnecessary reinforcement of the traditional feminine ideal (except for male Martha fans), as well as an unattainable class ideal (it takes an army of professional workers to achieve the Martha effect of an immaculate and lovingly adorned home in reality)? -- Yoshie

* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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