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MOST READ [4-9 MAY]

1. Fake Lesbian Phenomenon [Explicit Photos & Video] [4,738]

2. Sex Addiction [4,182]

3. More Casual About Sex [Hook-Up Culture] [4,180]

4. 2: Top Five Viral Videos [3,733]

5. 5: Fantasy Five [Explicit Videos] [3,649]

6. 27: Last Week's Front Page Photo Stories [3,626]

7. Cybersex Games [3,135]

8. Miley Cyrus, "Incest" & America's Culture War [2,952]

9. From Lolita to Miley Cyrus: Delicious Nymphets [2,463]

10. Almost Dead Bush: You Say Asshole; I Say Arsehole [2,099]

11. New Art: "Actress Slash Model" [Martin Maloney] [2,015]

12. Sex & Society: Prostitutes Condemned with Extreme Prejudice [1,914]

13. Sex Lives of Politicians [Don't You Long to Know More?] [1,873]

14. Maureen Dowd Gets Class-Conscious! [1,770]

15. 3: Top Five Viral Videos [1,742]


FRIDAY 9 MAY

Sex & Society: Prostitutes Condemned with Extreme Prejudice [1,304]

3: Top Five Viral Videos [1,096]

Meet the BoObs [Bourgeois Obamians] [713]

Myanmar [Burma] Disaster: Imperial Powers Itching to Intervene [651]

8: Most Popular Articles [Last 28 Days] [588]


THURSDAY 8 MAY

5: Fantasy Five [Explicit Videos] [1,804]

Myanmar [Burma]: Cyclone Disaster Exploited by the West [787]

Hillary Clinton Plans to Push Campaign Beyond Primaries [760]

Consumer Capitalism 101 [683]

Superhero Costumes: Kitsch Clashes with Fashion [661]


WEDNESDAY 7 MAY

Fake Lesbian Phenomenon [Explicit Photos & Video] [2,155]

Sex Lives of Politicians [Don't You Long to Know More?] [963]

Hillary Clinton Chases the Prole Vote [864]

"Iron Man" - Capitalist Propaganda Movie [829]

American Idol: Dumbed Down & Out [572]


TUESDAY 6 MAY

More Casual About Sex [Hook-Up Culture] [2,162]

Hillary Clinton: "Yes, We Can!" [958]

Barack Obama aka Slim Shady [869]

Creationists: Dumb Design Freaks [664]

The Brilliant "Mad Men" & America's Culture War [534]


MONDAY 5 MAY

27: Last Week's Front Page Photo Stories [1,682]

Cybersex Games [1,385]

Maureen Dowd Gets Class-Conscious! [924]

Reverend Jeremiah Wright Faces Racist Abuse [903]

Oprah & Obama: "Ordinary" Blacks? [879]


SUNDAY 4 MAY

Sex Addiction [2,040]

2: Top Five Viral Videos [1,719]

Miley Cyrus, "Incest" & America's Culture War [1,318]

Almost Dead Bush: You Say Asshole; I Say Arsehole [1,216]

New Art: "Actress Slash Model" [Martin Maloney] [1,163]

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Consumer Culture



Are the Financial Media Downplaying Possibility of a Depression?

Sunday, 11 May 2008 8:49 A GMT+01
A major part of the problem is that the financial journalists who cover Wall Street are used to writing for Wall Street's customers--the very mortgage companies and financial institutions that were raking in millions from the subprime bubble.

Consumer Capitalism 101

Thursday, 8 May 2008 8:39 A GMT+01
An unspoken, historic deal has defined US capitalism for 150 years. Capitalists paid rising wages to enable rising working class consumption. Workers had to provide rising work effort, rising profitability, and thus the even faster rise of profits.

Panic in the Malls: The Consumer Binge Is Over

Thursday, 24 April 2008 8:58 A GMT+01
Transfixed by the credit crisis, we're missing the year's biggest economic story: the end of the Great American Shopping Spree. For the past quarter-century, Americans have been on an unprecedented consumption binge - for cars, TVs, longer vacations.

Capitalism in Crisis [But The Wet Dreams Continue]

Sunday, 20 April 2008 9:46 A GMT+01
The ad cuts from the speedy car and its middle-aged driver to quick shots of a laughing and smiling young girl, maybe about 18 years old. But the girl doesn't look like the kind you would see on college campuses today. More like a "hippie chick."

Pop Culture: The Tyra Banks Show

Thursday, 20 March 2008 9:27 A GMT+01
Tyra doesn't give the people what they want, she gives them what she wants. The coincidence is that the subjects that command Tyra's interest most, celebrity, fashion and scandal, also happen to be those that her audience finds most fascinating.

Shop Till You Slump: Death of the American Consumer

Sunday, 16 March 2008 9:50 A GMT+01
There's talk already of emergency measures, like making Christmas a weekly holiday. More likely, there'll be a move to outsource shopping, just as we've already outsourced manufacturing, customer service, X-ray reading, and R & D. But to Whom?

Big Mac America [Capitalism, Culture & Imperialism]

Thursday, 28 February 2008 9:28 A GMT+01
>The faux-ethnographic art work is a brilliant critique of cultural imperialism and the pernicious excesses of capitalism. It consists of 34 carved and painted pieces inspired by African masks and fetish objects, and incorporates McDonalds' symbol

Oscars Celebrate Culture of Spectacle

Wednesday, 27 February 2008 9:41 A GMT+01
Now we need more than God. Along comes the cavalry aka the entertainment industry. What better way to keep the masses somatized than to give them the lowest common denominator? It's not quite bread and circuses. More like shopping and spectacle.

Save the World: Buy a T-Shirt [Merchandising Obama]

Monday, 25 February 2008 4:35 P GMT+01
The T-shirt has been put on the pedestal of iconic status in modern culture. It embodies a paradigm of capitalism, sociability and leisure lifestyle because it is so basic with a natural approachability that contains the power to make a profit.

Fuck Valentine's Day! The "Love" Delusion

Tuesday, 12 February 2008 9:42 A GMT+01
This week, millions of people will celebrate the crippling delusion known as "love" by sending flowers, booking restaurants and placing stomach-churning small ads in newspapers. Valentine's Day - the only national "event" dedicated to mental illness.

Sex, Porn & Consumerism

Sunday, 10 February 2008 7:44 P GMT+01
Masturbatory fantasy lurks at the heart of consumerism. The commodity that perfectly epitomizes capitalist values is modern mass-produced pornography. It's the animating principle of most contemporary advertising: "sex sells".

American Idol: A Freak Show for the Masses

Sunday, 20 January 2008 2:55 P GMT+01
This year, the pre-season auditions force us to confront a question haunting society: Where is the line between deluded belief in one’s talent and actual mental illness. Or, sadder still, mental handicap? This is the fine line that the auditions wal

Rebranding America: Consumerstan

Thursday, 3 January 2008 12:30 P GMT+01
Shopping is America?s true national pastime, and not just during the holidays - which simply exacerbate the condition. Like our other pastimes - football, gambling, drinking, porn - shopping can change from guilty pleasure to nasty addiction.

Anarchy in the Shopping Malls

Thursday, 27 December 2007 9:30 A GMT+01
Tis the the season of spirited shopdropping. Anti-consumerist artists slip replica products packaged with political messages onto shelves while religious proselytizers insert pamphlets between the pages of gay-and-lesbian readings at book stores.

Fucking Rubbish! Great Clip Challenging Consumer Waste

Thursday, 20 December 2007 10:16 A GMT+01
The Story of Stuff is a short film released online this month and takes viewers on a provocative tour of our consumer-driven culture, from resource extraction to iPod incineration, exposing the real costs of this use-it and lose-it approach to stuff.

What's It All About? Sex & Status

Sunday, 16 December 2007 10:39 A GMT+01
There's the tendency in all of us to show off how much we can afford to waste. In a world of "bling", the last thing a car is used for is getting from A to B; it is a symbol of wealth, power and status, and a tool for enhancing a person's sex life.

Hyper-Frantic Consumerism [A Symptom of Deep Insecurity]

Tuesday, 4 December 2007 9:20 A GMT+01
If the developed world is to implement the 80% cuts in carbon emissions the UN demands in the talks starting in Bali today, the lives of our children will have to be dramatically different from everything we are currently bringing them up to expect.

The "Narrative" of Market Forces [Reading the Recession Story]

Thursday, 22 November 2007 10:21 A GMT+01
It is clear that salient, emotion-arousing narratives — those that capture the popular imagination and damage public confidence — are central to the 'behavior' of recessions. As these stories gain currency, they impel people to curtail their spending

Oprah Says: "Let Them Eat Cake" [Dispatches]

Thursday, 18 October 2007 8:26 A GMT+01
Contemporary culture 'persuades' us that we should lust after the latest symbol promising status. Oprah, whose fetishizing of celebrity and consumerism is legend, feeds the 'shop till you drop' indoctrination more than most in the capitalist media.

The Culture of "Bling": Condemning Economic Growth

Wednesday, 10 October 2007 8:28 A GMT+01
At what point do we decide that the marginal costs of further growth exceed the marginal benefits? Politicians believe growth must continue, for good or ill. It seems to me that in the rich world we have already reached the logical place to stop.

Corporate Feudalism: Work, Consume, Die

Wednesday, 26 September 2007 8:56 A GMT+01
So long as the television commercials allow a flickering image of lounge chairs, cool drinks, and palm-sheltered beaches, our minds are in no danger of corruption, For 'civilized' man a vacation is no more than a gesture, a tawdry reward for toil.

Fashion, Sex & Subversion [Another Turn of the Capitalist Screw?]

Monday, 24 September 2007 9:28 A GMT+01
An aggressive brand of sexuality stalked the catwalk. Searingly bright colour and micro-mini dresses reappeared as trends but it was sex, and specifically the figure of the dominatrix, that emerged as the preoccupation for young designers.

The Burden of Debt Is Crippling Capitalism [No Sympathy Here]

Friday, 21 September 2007 8:53 A GMT+01
The Federal Reserve action, rather than curbing the addiction to debt, has given a new fix to the addict, one which could well produce catastrophic consequences, sooner rather than later. We may be on the brink of another "great depression".

In Pursuit of the Avant-Garde: Is Fashion Art?

Friday, 21 September 2007 8:52 A GMT+01
While artists often spend long periods in the doldrums, going over the same tired ground, the fashion industry just gets on with its job. Season after season, year after year, designers, photographers and models churn out clothes, images, looks.

Fed Rate Cut: Dollar Now Monopoly Money

Thursday, 20 September 2007 9:19 A GMT+01
The fact that the Fed chose to lower both the funds and discount rates shows the uniquely serious nature of this crisis. It is by far the most ominous portent of the future prospects of the US economy since the current "subprime crisis" started.