commons-blog: Losing the Washington Commons

From one end of the Mall to the other, billboards and huge television monitors stream across the green lawn, promoting Vanilla Pepsi all in celebration of the first NFL game of the season. It seems particularly disgusting to me that the Mall, our nation's commons, is stripped of its value even for one day.

The event was deemed so auspicious that George W. Bush took yet more time off from fighting the war on terrorism to appear, via videotape, at the end of the concert and just before the game, in the manner of a TV huckster. He tried to make some connection between football and "the spirit that guides the brave men and women" of the military, much as the concert had done. He also said pro football "celebrates the values that make our country so strong." Like what, violence and greed? Then, in intense close-up, the leader of the Free World asked the trademarked rhetorical question, "Are you ready for some football?"

"All my friends say I ought to put up a fence and charge people $2 a head, but that's not my way," Balestra said. "I'm enjoying this. People lying down in my wheat field, and wrapping their heads in foil."

I grabbed the latest issue of Adbusters without even looking at it because, well, Adbusters. Finding the live without dead time CD (features Allen Ginsberg, Negativland, Ani DiFranco, Saul Williams… and if you’re not listening yet I’ve got nothing left) mixed by DJ Spooky that subliminal kid,

did I mention Fugazi?

The top result of a google image search on ‘p2p art’:

The Pitch (Kansas City), May 23, 2002: Guards tell Krishna devotees to keep off the Plaza’s private parts.

They must have said go to jail a hundred times. They said we couldn’t be on their private property. They told us that all the fountains, all the benches, all the courtyards and all the trash cans belong to Highwoods.

I said, Well, everything does belong to God, Swami continues. Then a female officer told me, Not here. Here, Highwoods is God.

Despite the threat of jail time, the Hare Krishnas have no plans to stop their twice-weekly chants on the Plaza. Swami still holds out some hope that the security officer who declared that “Highwoods is God” will one day be less caught up in the temporary identity of being a security guard.