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Just where had I seen this image of the American flag with the stars of the states replaced with corporate logos?

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Dear Editor,

After picking up July’s issue of Gwangju News, I had to sit down and scratch my head. Just where had I seen this image of the American flag with the stars of the states replaced with corporate logos? It surely wasn’t the first time I had come across this rather banal commentary on American capitalism, and after a few moments it came back to me. When I was a freshman in college around 2003, I actually had this very image on my wall. I had cut it from the infamous American “culture-jamming” magazine, Adbusters, and a quick Google search revealed to me it was, as I thought, a copyrighted image (by Shi-Zhe-Yung under Rockport Publishers).

I was incredibly taken aback that not only were there no proper citations given for the origin of the image, but also that your magazine chose to provide absolutely zero context for the implications and purpose of selecting it for the cover. I suppose the effort was a dispassionate attempt to point out the “monstrosities” of large business in the west (Pizza Hut? Really? You obviously haven’t tried the Triple Meat Italiano), but to what effect you were searching to achieve, especially in the current state of the American economy, is completely lost on me.

I laughed a little out loud when I read the caption inside, ‘”This land is your land, this land is my land,’ because we own it.” Yeah, that goes for you Bell South (doesn’t exist anymore) United Air, Citigroup (both bankrupt), and Playboy (to the dismay of pubescent males across the world, also nearing bankruptcy). I point these out to show how not only is the image demonstrative of a total lack of economic and cultural contextualization; it’s also laughably dated. Like I said, I had the image on my wall. Six years ago. I was also 18 and got a C in Political Science that semester.

For such a controversial image to be published outside of its intended realm of influence in both location and time, your choice of putting it as the cover was quite shocking. The timing only led to exacerbate this insipidly pedestrian attempt at social commentary, which was obviously purposeful to coincide with America’s Independence Day. In a period where the country is suffering from soaring unemployment rates, a total shifting of power, continuing war, re-structuring of the systems of taxation, health care, and civil rights, I have to wonder–why ‘ya gotta kick a guy when he’s down? It would be entirely and wholly offensive if it weren’t so remarkably uninformed. Way to rage against the machine, guys.

Sincerely,
J Purvis

Good points. We’ll run your letter, of course.

The image was NOT taken from someone else but is a photograph of a flag, the flag itself did not come with a copyright, but the photographer gave us the rights to run the photo of a flag. This may be an unimportant detail, but the photograph was used by permission.

Very good of you to run down the original designer of the flag, and I don’t doubt that Adbusters ran a copyrighted photo by Shi-Zhe-Yung, but this photograph was not by that photographer. Our apologies to Rockport Publishing, and Shi-Zhe Yung, I did not know the photograph as anything than that of a flag. I checked the flag itself, and it doesn’t have a copyright tag on it.

Your other points have validity, and this cover was chosen after two other covers were considered. The next-best cover, but one that was rejected by the publisher (or better put, by the representatives of the publisher) so we scrambled and came up with this one. It IS out of date, but I don’t think the intention was to kick the US while it is down, but rather to remind people just exactly who calls the shots in the US (corporations) no matter who the President is. The lack of commentary on the inside of the magazine allows readers to interpret the cover any way they want. That three corporations + Playboy are gone or almost gone only shows just how wrong corporate thinking can be. I didn’t have to tell you that though, as you already knew.

Isn’t a vague cover without explanation better than the preachy editorials previously written by yours truly?
 
Nothing I do is dispassionate, but that flag hit me as saying that corporations have more control over the US government than the “people” do.  Thus, it has nothing to do with the benevolence or monstrosity of a corporation, nor is it an attempt to kick the US while it is down, since, as you say, it is so out of date.
 
This cover could be interpreted to have something to do with my #1 passionate issue: the environment.  But it takes a lot of thinking to get there:  1) corporations provide a lot of great jobs, but at what cost to the environment? 2) corporations, via GATT 2, NAFTA and other trade treaties and laws now seek the cheapest possible labor, which often causes products to be shipped back to the markets they are built for, thus worsening the environment, and costing US labor jobs, which are thereby shipped overseas 3) those laws, many of which were passed during the Clinton Administration (GATT 2,  NAFTA, Welfare Reform and most prominently, the banking law that expanded a banks ability to loan money form 12 times its deposits to 30 times its deposits! ! !) witnessed the end of the democratic party supporting the causes of environment and labor, and toward a new democratic party that was able to hammer through drastic changes in the “American Way” that Republicans dared not attempt, until a Newt Gingrich/ Bill Clinton team emerged that gave corporations even more of what they wanted.
 
And with all this so many companies failed?  Wow, can’t blame labor for that!
 
The UN points out that 16% of the earth’s humans consume 80% of the products, and that less than 5% of the humans live in the US, which consumes over 25% of the earth’s energy resources.  What this suggests Jay, is that we are not only building products MOST humans don’t need and can’t afford, we are also moving the products at great cost to the environment.
Granted, 22% of the fuel in the world is spent moving food, but that just shows us the vulnerability of mega-sized cities fed by agribusiness: if food itself is part of the for-profit world, like American health care, then humanity is lowered another peg, yes?
 
That’s what I hoped some readers would get from the cover, but how, since, as you say, there was no follow up inside?  Mea Culpa.
 
In short, every human should consume 85% less energy than they are now, and in the US the number should be 90%. Put another way:  for every new driver in China, Russia, Brazil or India, three need to quit driving in the US.  Yikes.
 
Or:  we can keep our refrigerators, TVs and PCs, but to do so, must quit driving automobiles.  Then problem with this one is that the US power-base of voters is located in suburbia where automobiles are pretty much required to get to work.
 
Shall we ask GM why it ripped up the tracks of 70 local commuter train services with the help of Firestone (which was looking to sell bus and auto tires) and Standard Oil (which was looking to sell more gasoline) during the depression?  No, indeed we won’t because, uh, there isn’t much left of GM either.  The same GM that kept its Stuttgart Opel factory churning to resupply Hitler’s army transportation needs, and, along with ITT (Hitler’s communications), and Ford (Hitler’s tanks) profited greatly from both the US and German war efforts in WW II.
 
I’ve been through all of this before, but the US may be down, but not out.  Not out of Iraq, (oil) Afghanistan, (oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean) or Pakistan (same oil pipeline).  This is because the same corporations have their eyes on continuing the US energy consumption rates, while ignoring environmental urgencies.  OK that does not make them monstrous, but certainly it starts to stink when the US Congress and White House are passing laws that allow MORE profits and energy hoggishness, while the average Detroit citizen just lost her or his job, has little chance of finding work at the same pay ANYWHERE, but certainly not in Detroit, where MANY are moving out of town.  That’s because of the “domino” effect (yes, that lesser pizza is from Detroit, remember?) hitting the WORKING CLASS due to the MANAGEMENT CLASS making very poor, short-sighted, profit-only decisions that threaten the American Way of Life in an equal way as the environmental disaster brought on by these same reckless money-hungry overpaid executives.
 
Oops, there I go again.
 
But is it good journalism, or just ranting without evidence?
 
After 30 years in the business, and having quit two jobs because editors refused to print good stories (one was of the homeless in Roanoke VA, and I made a documentary about that) I can safely say that we have seen the END of investigative reporting that exposes the power base, or even calls a bad law a bad law.  It’s worse in the ROK where TURTH is NOT a defense in a libel case.  Thus, if you expose an unseemly truth about someone, but it makes them look bad, the fact that you made them lose face could put you in jail even if your story IS TRUE, >wow< that puts me in a tight box, but I try to reach an audience that is willing to engage in conversations about the important topics of the day.
 
Thanks for joining the conversation!
 
Sincerely,
Doug
PS: This is, as I pointed out myself one day, a community magazine. Your letter has inspired me to never again write about geopolitics in these pages. I’ll try to limit my environmental blurbs too. So, how about those Kia Tigers!? Rain enough for you lately?

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