Battleangel

No, it’s not something you wear on your ass … unfortunately.
You can always trust the Daily Show to pick out the social and moral shortcomings of the US society. Last night’s episode features an interview with “entrepreneur” Benjamin Rogovy, who launched a controversial advertising campaign last month to promote his Poker site. Since he felt that the streets were littered with poor, homeless and otherwise useless people, he decided to convert them to billboards in a project he calls bumvertising. Not so subtle. Needless to say, people are upset by the practise itself and the choice of the connotation “bum” which most would consider a pejorative. And on Benjamin’s website are ample examples of a total disregard for human dignity as he revels in descriptive terms like “vagrant” and “derelict.” As mentioned on the Daily Show, wages could be estimated around 75 cents per hour. The website also sports review of homeless people, kind of like work performance reviews (only public and demeaning), saying things like “Unfortunately, his contract with PokerFaceBook.com will not be renewed [...]He reminds us that a Bumvertising representative must be enthusiastic, willing, and appreciative.” It is difficult to get over the way this prick actually thinks (who knows what goes on in his head anyway?) he is helping the homeless by humiliating and stigmatizing them for a few cents.

(Daily Show cap explaining some of the logic behind the scheme in humerous terms …)

Is this perhaps to be the new applauded way of Social Security in the United States? It is not so far fetched as some would have you believe.

Rogovy was among other things quoted as saying that “the make their own hours” and “I think many choose to live as they do.” Of course. That is what the protestant work ethic has hammered into every American child. In a somewhat unrelated story, it makes me recall Dick Cheney’s comment on Guantanamo detainees, saying that they were “living in the tropics.” Talk about only seeing a VERY narrow angle of reality. Perhaps one shouldn’t be surprised that one socially ignorant brat is creating bumvertising when the cold, inconsiderate, ultraliberal market economy and the crony capitalism that is the US is continually rewarded. People learn by imitation in a sense. And even though this is especially overt and ungraceful, is it in any way different from fishing for military recruits in lower income brackets / strata and sending them as cannon fodder in wars aimed to line the pockets of the well-to-do?

Can capitalism sink any lower? Can the psychosis of the american dream be expressed with more clarity? And did I mention I hate poker? (because obviously, like Daily Show noted gambling isn’t exactly a social virtue either)