Expect a new crusade—for dollar and country—against a classroom video
Image by net_efekt via Flickr
Until Tuesday, “The Story of Stuff” was spreading like whooping cough through the world’s classrooms with relatively little opposition—it had been banned by only one school board so far. But Tuesday The New York Times featured the video on its front page. That brought it to the attention of The Heritage Foundation, which redubbed it “The Story of Lies” and published a review that begins like this:
The Story of Stuff highlights the very extreme left’s Greenpeace view of America. Essentially it tells the story of how America is not a nation to be proud of, and in fact, your child should be ashamed for living in it.
The comments following that post begin with sentences like these: “It had better not be in the school where my child goes,” and “It is inconceivable to see the amount of American traitors behind this, with this pathetic mind set.”
What is this traitorous, pathetic mindset? “The Story of Stuff” tells the story of American consumerism, how it started, how it works, how it impacts natural resources, and where it leads (to the landfill). Its creator and narrator, Annie Leonard, covers a semester’s economics in 20 minutes, from toxins to working conditions to foreign affairs, while explaining, clearly, the means of production that make the system go. She is frank in a manner we may have become unaccustomed to seeing in American classroom material. She accuses the system, bluntly, of trashing the planet. But not without evidence, such as the fact that 99 percent of the materials flow of production goes to waste within six months. One percent endures as a product or possession. Is honesty un-American or very American? Here is Ms. Leonard on brominated fire retardants:
We take our pillows, we douse them in a neurotoxin, we take them home and put our heads on them for eight hours a night. I don’t know but it seems like in a country with this much potential, we could think of a better way to keep our heads from catching on fire at night.
The video has been labeled anti-capitalist by the Heritage Foundation (and by the parent who complained to the Missoula, Montana schoolboard), but while it is clearly anti-consumerist, to call it anti-capitalist shows little faith in capitalism. It can be called anti-consumerist in its critique of an economic system that depends too much on people buying new stuff they don’t need and discarding stuff that’s still useful. But when Ms. Leonard makes her pitch for a better system, she doesn’t call for the nationalization of industry, nor for workers of the world to unite, she calls for the cycle of capitalism to go in a circle instead of a line—sustainability.
She also makes traitorous statements of this order: “I hold true to the vision and values that governments should be of the people, by the people, for the people.”
- “The view from inside the greenhouse: why the right is wrong about ‘The Story of Stuff’” [Related Post]
- The Story of Stuff [Official Website]
- A Cautionary Video About America’s Stuff [NYT]
- The Story of Lies: Greenpeace in Your Kid’s School [Heritage Foundation]
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Any time you suggest there might be limits of any kind, you’re accused of being a commie. Same old tired script.
Right, Joseph, and yet you would think it would be prudent for capitalists to know the limits. Long-term vision seems to be out of bounds. Is it because of short-term greed? Or is it faith in the market? If Milton Friedman were still around, we could ask him.
I think the big issue with this video is that she isn’t coming from a middle-point on these issues. She’s saying that we are purposely trashing the planet, in very emphatic ways, and of course kids, being impressionable, are going to soak this up like a sponge.
And in reference to the limits, I agree. There are plenty of right wingers who throw around the word “commie” just because they hear it as a talking point on a TV or radio show. But I that there should be limits on things like lawsuits against these companies. In the end, these places are businesses that are there to make money, and if there are lawsuits slapped on them all the time because of one person claiming something happened to them as a result of their product, they will close. Case in point is the whole pillow issue brought up. We “douse our pillows” in neurotoxins to be flame-retardent because someone, sometime had their pillow catch on fire and burn them and then decided to sue the pillow-making company instead of taking responsibility for the fact that they left their candle burning too close to their bed (or whatever the situation is). So they compensate by making the pillows fireproof, but of course chemicals do this best, and now, in an effort to protect people’s pillows from spontaneously combusting, they use these chemicals to make sure the issue doesn’t happen again. So I think it is less an issue, at least for me, of being against regulation, but being for regulation of things that are important. I think the lawsuit industry should be regulated so that we have less frivolous lawsuits and allow these companies to flourish in productive (and even sustainable) ways without fear of being sued, thus causing over-compensation.
And, not saying this sarcastically Jeff, I would really like to see references for any sort of claim that sleeping on mass produced pillows has caused health issues. Unless that statement was facetious.
Thanks for making those points, Philip. There are lots of studies of the toxic effects of brominated flame retardants, though I don’t know any of the studies have focused on pillows. Annie Leonard’s larger point in that segment of the video is that we don’t know the effects of all the toxins we use, that no matter how many studies there have been, there haven’t been enough. She’s taken a lot of heat for her statistics, and I certainly would not want to be in the position of defending each of them, but she has answered with an annotated transcript you can find at storyofstuff.org. Studies or no studies, the rhetorical strategy seems effective… she’s simply pointing out that we lay our heads on neurotoxins nightly.
First read this:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
Then go back and watch the “Story of Stuff” video. Those malthusian theories have been disproved by Simon, Lomborg, and others.
I shall do so, Gary, but not until after I finish feasting on this delicious dodo bird.
In response to another comment. See in context »Attempts at humor in response to facts…yeah
In response to another comment. See in context »Dodo bird: also factual.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] transparency on credit-card companies. The movement also appears in the controversial cartoon, The Story of Stuff, that tells kids the real story behind all the stuff we buy, use, and throw [...]