By Richard K. Barry
Okay, forgive the 25-cent political philosophy graduate school word, but commodification is a very useful term. If you don't know, it refers to the selling of something that normally would not or should not be thought of as something to be sold. Sex is one of the most common concepts that fits this category. And if Glenn Beck is reading this, yes, Karl Marx is associated with the word. Too fucking bad.
Some Washington pol was on television yesterday saying something that had not occurred to me. It should have, but it didn't. It was that if the president released pictures of bin Laden's dead body, the image would be appearing on t-shirts and in other weird public ways almost immediately. I'm not even sure I can articulate why that would be awful, but it would be, and it would happen.
If you insist, I will say again that I am glad bin Laden is dead, but I don't want to see grotesque pictures of a famous dead person silk-screened on cotton Ts as someone's idea of a political statement or even a twisted sense of art. Do you?