tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30400278.post1293030971712362791..comments2010-02-08T11:02:17.159-05:00Comments on The Gross Report: Retail: More of The Same, Wherever You GoStephen Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08704949337738506028noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30400278.post-69292402849951013662007-01-31T13:51:00.000-05:002007-01-31T13:51:00.000-05:00Une introduction:
*Je suis Marxiste, tendance Gro...<b>Une introduction:</b><br /><br /><i>*Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho?</i><br /><br />Retail madness! Or am I the one who is insane, overly disturbed by homogenization? What we need is "a sanity clause? There ain't no sanity clause..." (see the the link). And now back to our regularly scheduled program... Shoppers of the World: Unite!<br /><br /><br /><b>A Retail of Two Cities:</b><br /><br />Snoop Dawg had the best of rhymes, M.C. Hammer had the worst of rhymes, it was the age of credit cards, it was the age of bankruptcy, it was the epoch of “have my cake,” it was the epoch of “eat it too,” it was the season of reality shows, it was the season of escapism, it was the spring of sales, it was the winter of more sales, we had everything before us, we had nothing different before us, we were all going directly to the mall, we were all going directly to the other mall (with the same stores)--in short, the retail <i>here</i> is so much like the retail <i>there</i>, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, like it was swallowing medicine, that uniformity is a good thing.<br /><br /><br />*A famous French witticism (often attributed to Jean-Luc Godard) was, "Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho," i.e. "I'm a Marxist of the Groucho variety". This line was notably heard in the 1972 comedy by Claude Lelouch "L'aventure c'est l'aventure", (starring Lino Ventura, Aldo Maccione, Jacques Brel, Johnny Hallyday and Charles Denner) where the would-be heroes get involved with a central-American guerilla; it spread to other nations as well in the 1960s and 1970s. The Youth International Party, a 1960s-1970s ad-hoc political group of Anarcho-Marxists known for street theatre and pranks, were denounced in a Communist newspaper editorial as "Groucho Marxists".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com