Culture Vultures THE BAFFLER COMMENTS ON OUR LIFE AND TIMES by John Cooney Thomas Frank has a big problem with America. The business of this country may be business, but this cultural critic intends to let you know all the problems that go along with such a capitalist outlook. He is not interested in offering nice, neat, packaged solutions, but instead strives to inform us of the massive damage done to our society as we blindly embrace the corporate-dominated information age. Frank's main weapon is The Baffler, a magazine he started right here at Thomas Jefferson's mighty institution of higher learning. Styled after H. L. Mencken's The American Mercury, an influential magazine in the 20s and 30s which attacked big business and its effect on American culture, The Baffler appears more like a slim paperback than a glossy, modern magazine. A collection of essays contributed by like-minded writers, The Baffler attacks the corporate culture that is America. In a copy of the magazine you'll find articles about why labor loses in today's global economy, how corporations such as MTV abuse unpaid interns, and why the "corporate soul" movement is so pathetic. With pieces about novelist Thomas Pynchon and attacks on "alternative" music as well as fiction and poetry, you'll discover a different vein of cultural criticism. And it's quality stuff. Anyone can whine about American society, but few can earn praise like The Baffler has -- The Toronto Star claimed that it is "the smartest and most exciting magazine in America." In fact, the Toronto Star is only one of many. The super-hip (and now defunct) magazine Might was so impressed that they were afraid to say anything negative in their review "because the last thing we need is to be skewered by them as cruelly and accurately as they did Wired." In the same way that The Baffler doesn't look like an ordinary magazine, neither does it read like an ordinary magazine. Journalism is not the goal; each article is an essay in some way critiquing the existing systems of our society. The writing is not wholly serious, as wry humor weaves throughout all of the pieces. But make no mistake, these people are not out for a laugh. Although the format is not teeth-grinding serious, the overall magazine has a sense of mission. These writers are angry at what they see as a corporate culture slowly taking away their freedom by turning America into a vast shopping mall. Frank came back to his old school last Tuesday to give a talk that focused on the state of labor in this climate. Explaining that "labor is no longer a part of the Democratic picture," Frank observed that the market has become equated with pure democracy, almost an extension of nature. Any attempt to regulate or influence the market, therefore, is a form of snobbery. Who would dare claim to know better than the market? Unfortunately for most working class Americans, Frank asserted, unrestricted markets are bad for labor and workers, but great for management. Currently, the market calls for moving industry to the Third World where labor at near-starvation wages and under slave-like working conditions is exploited; the recent controversy involving Nike is a good example. Frank explained that by letting the market run its course, corporations are allowed to abuse workers. So while the current trend is rampant globalization, he pointed out that there are huge problems with such a system and no one seems to care. So how does this affect the students of this school, the privileged soon-to-be members of the white-collar world? These shifts in culture are reflected in universities around the country and there's an article in The Baffler [number 9] considering them. Entitled "Popular Front Redux" by Chris Lehmann, the article describes recent attempts at working-class "solidarity" amongst professors and students at universities around the country. It portrays American universities as training grounds for future professionals. Such institutions, he argues, have little to do with higher learning and even less in common with the working class or labor movements. The article shows how colleges have become swept up in the corporate wave that Frank has been warning everyone about. In 1991 a full quarter of the million bachelor degrees handed out went to business majors, not too big a deal considering thirty percent of bachelor degrees are in the liberal arts. Unless, of course, one looks at the statistics from 1970 where seventy percent of bachelor degrees went to liberal arts majors. Perhaps the easiest way to gauge these changes is also the simplest: Why does one go to college? It's not to learn, it's to get a job; that's not even news anymore. Thomas Frank takes a straight look at our society today and questions where our priorities lie. Using his magazine to spread the word, Frank and his entire Baffler staff attack the American culture they see as thoroughly inundated with business and money. Frank does not offer us solutions to the problems caused by this situation, instead he examines the issues that arise. In the race to build bigger and better and to push the stock market into the stratosphere, few stop to think about what we've become. Perhaps America doesn't mind being a society where "corporations have become the dominant institutions of our times." But one thing is certain: Thomas Frank minds quite a bit.

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