Rating: 
Summary: A Welcome Cannon - No Bobos in Paradise
Review: Commodify your Dissent is a collection of essays from the Baffler magazine. The essays are social critiques of Mass Media and corporate and consumer culture. They have the sarchastic and hilarious style of H.L. Mencken and, like the latter's work, they end up exposing many false 'truths'. The quality of the writing is excellent, i became extremely envious. My favorite section was The Culture of Business and the critique of businees literature. there are also critiques of commercial grunge music, packaging of artists (one of my favorite essays, exposes pretentious writing for what it is), elites and youth consumerism. You'll learn and laugh. I enjoyed this book so much that I bouught other titles from Thomas Frank and subscribed to the Baffler.
Rating:
Summary: A Welcome Cannon - No Bobos in Paradise
Review: Commodify your Dissent is a collection of essays from the Baffler magazine. The essays are social critiques of Mass Media and corporate and consumer culture. They have the sarchastic and hilarious style of H.L. Mencken and, like the latter's work, they end up exposing many false 'truths'. The quality of the writing is excellent, i became extremely envious. My favorite section was The Culture of Business and the critique of businees literature. there are also critiques of commercial grunge music, packaging of artists (one of my favorite essays, exposes pretentious writing for what it is), elites and youth consumerism. You'll learn and laugh. I enjoyed this book so much that I bouught other titles from Thomas Frank and subscribed to the Baffler.
Rating: 
Summary: not enough of these books around
Review: Fun stuff, if occasionally verging on a bit of a guilty pleasure. Presents a needed populist critique of bizcult that doesn't require a grad seminar in Foucalt (though nothing wrong with that). I can't get too worked up over some of the apparent failings of the book cited by some below (yes, can be somewhat repetitious, for instance), because overall the message is right-on. Just as we need more subtle "serious" critiques, so too do we need more straightahead salvos. Room enough for both and god knows we need them in this media-saturated corporate hive.
Rating: 
Summary: enough already..
Review: Here we go again. The media giants are evil. They have consolidated to the point where a handful now own all the major information venues. They hijack culture in order to sell more schlock. They have turned rebellion into a marketable commodity.
A&R men are sleazy and just out to make a buck.
Corporate America is sick and sucking the life out of us. Publishers do this or that just to sell more books. Etc.
It goes on and on. The essays are really all over the place. A few are interesting and informative, but most are just more of the same negativity we are now accustumed to. Perhaps the essays werent so trite in the mid 90s when they were written, but Ive personally had enough. Not sure if there was one positive, remotely uplifting thing in any of the essays. Understandably, that isnt what the book is about, but I just found it often slanted and overkill. For ex, one full essay is devoted to how Wired magazine is dedicated only to selling its sponsors goods and fueling desire for constant consumption. The author seems to have overlooked that the magazine also discusses exciting scientific breakthroughs and offers articles from some of todays most well respected thinkers.
Rating:
Summary: A bunch of white guys sitting around talking
Review: I actually agree with most of the analysis of culture, media, and business that Frank and his frat boys turn out but it doesn't change a thing as long as they are replicating the power structures they rail against by creating an in-club of overwhelmingly male hepcats.
Rating: 
Summary: Provocative, informative, loud, almost shrill
Review: I consider myself a die-hard leftist, and I agree with most of the conclusions that the authors of _Commodify Your Dissent_ come to. It reminds me a lot of Noam Chomsky, another leftist who reveals modern consumer culture for what it is.The problem is that the left is remarkably short on solutions, or even the feeling that solutions are possible. _Commodify Your Dissent_ is a collection of essays whose premise is that the U.S. situation is hopeless: * as many other authors have said, our main means of dissent - our writing, particularly irony - has been swallowed up by our enemies; it's now hip to be ironic, so advertisers adopt irony about advertising as their pose toward the world. So we can't use irony anymore. * In the U.S., "identity" now means "what car I own and what clothes I wear." We define ourselves as consumers. Once again, we've moved so far in this direction that it's impossible to imagine a way out. * The culture of business dominates American discourse. We look up to American business leaders as our new gods, and we assume that The Market will correct everything. Resisting The Market is futile, because it is infinitely more intelligent than any policymaker. Hence, leave the world to the Bill Gateses. * Music is corporatized junk. and so on, ad nauseum, for a couple hundred pages. After a while, we - or at least I - get numbed to it. Great, so the world has been utterly cheapened by corporations. Sure, corporations own the political process. And? What do I do about it? _The Baffler_ has no suggestions, which in the end makes it a shrill mouthpiece of powerlessness. We've grown up on a steady diet of powerlessness. The left would assert that this is because the power structure *wants* us to think we're powerless; it helps them when few of us resist. Now _The Baffler_ - with the totally altruistic goal of helping us out - has told us again that we're powerless, has strengthened the case, and has done nothing to correct this impression. _Commodify Your Dissent_ ends with one of the most shrill, paranoid, counterproductive essays I've ever read, bringing to a crescendo all the doomsaying that peppered the foregoing pages. Nothing's wrong with being shrill and unproductive. I just thought it fair to warn people that they're getting more of what they're used to.
Rating:
Summary: Faboo!
Review: I found it purely by chance while wandering Borders in a deep blue funk. Definately the source of my happiest moments in a long time. My only reservation about the book is that it is very short on suggestions and/or solutions. Still, for putting the truth out there, many MANY thanks. A book that could change your life, or at least make you cancel your subscription to Details and try to end your slavery to corporate "alternative" culture.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Critque of Contemporary American Culture
Review: I've just finished reading the six or seven preceding reviews and have little to add because I strongly agree with virtually all the comments made. So at the risk of wasting more of your time, I'll say this is clearly the best book I've read in the last two years (Of course, this statement is of limited value because you have no way of knowing what my reading habits are like.) In addition to superb content, many of the articles are riddled with memorable phrases. This does not mean the collection of essays is flawless. As others have mentioned, some of the (earlier) essays are downright adolescent, with a strictly antithetical viewpoint. A few others seem to suffer from a somewhat simplistic Marxist slant. But even these make fine use of language. Of the 20+ essays the majority are incisive excoriations of contemporary, market-dominated American culture. It's very likely this book will surprise, entertain, invigorate, and inform you. I also think you'll find Tom Vanderbilt's pieces particularly worthwhile.
Rating:
Summary: You'll either get it or you won't.
Review: If you don't get it, don't worry. Practically the whole of western popular rock 'n' roll "culture" is geared to your tastes. For the tiny minority that is the rest of us, discovery of the Baffler is like Robinson Crusoe's discovery of footprints on the beach. Sharp writing, lots of attitude, socially conscious, and funny! Backnumbers are difficult to find, especially since the April 25th, 2001 fire which destroyed the Baffler office, so snap up this collection and take out a subscription immediately!! The future of western civilisation, or at least the snotty, overeducated, disaffected part, might depend on you!
Rating:
Summary: Just get it!
Review: If you're tired of the legions of "The Market is God" ninnies who control the pulpits of every mass media outlet, you will LOVE this book. Hilarious, insightful, and occasionally, even profound.
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