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Unamerican
to MediaReader
A Letter from Unamerican's Owner/Operator, Srini
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Dear Mediareader,
Before you collapse into your predictable round of self-congratulatory
backslapping at having struck such a crippling blow on me and
my oh-so-unworthy business, I'd like to direct your attention
towards the following:
* Item: Josh, in his "candid expose", chose to interview
but one extremely biased subject during a time of deep (albeit
justified) disillusion and cite at length a one-sided, hate-filled
(and utterly unjustified) critique in the pages of fucking Maximum
Rock And Roll, a publication that's famous for pretending to be
objective when its only REAL objective is to remain chief tastemaker
for those who would define what is and isn't "punk",
no matter whose legs get broken as a consequence.
* Item: Josh implies that my inferior business skills had led
Unamerican Activities to utter ruin, despite the fact that the
year 2000 was our strongest sales year yet even though I took
a month off in order to transplant my operations across the country.
In so doing, Josh ignored the complete redesign of my site, over
one hundred new stickers and buttons, free .pdf greeting cards,
and book deal that have made my project - according to my own
standards - WAY radder than ever before; all of which took place
during this year of Unamerican's purported demise.
* Item: As in the aforementioned MRR hit piece, Josh chooses a
reductionist logic of only mentioning that I sell stickers and
other merchandise, casually neglecting the fact that there are
nearly 200 pages of writing on unamerican.com, almost all of which
are philosophical in nature (refer to http://www.unamerican.com/truth
for one major example). In truth, Unamerican is as much 'zine
as it is business; perhaps 'zinesters are not supposed to actually
survive off their efforts?
* Item: James and I have discussed several misrepresentations
that were made during his interview; i can forward our correspondence
to you for your enlightenment about these issues upon request.
Notable among them is the assertion that I lied about my famous
"poverty sucks" campaign, which is an accusation so
incredible I could hardly believe it. This happened a good year
and a half before James even worked for me, which would explain
why he had no personal knowledge of it, but your publication of
this without fact-checking is just fucking stupid.
Why is it that you intellectual "punks" continually
miss the forest for the trees when observing my efforts? What
ails you fuckers? The only explanation I can think of when I read
these kinds of attacks upon me is fear; fear that I might actually
be a nice person with an honest intent of changing people's lives
for the better through my memes, thus giving the lie to your ideological
distaste for
businesses in general. Let me assure you that you are correct
to fear this. My manner is far from that you implied, as anyone
who knows me (viz. the long list of close friends that graces
the dedication on my home page) could tell you. Of course, no
effort was made to contact anyone with anything favorable to say
about me; such bias I simply cannot excuse as anything other than
editorial privilege and agenda.
While James and I had our differences, I only skimped on him when
his requests were unreasonable (travel plans that excluded me
but depended on my financing, his claim of ownership of half the
business despite having invested not one dime in its execution
and drawing a salary even while I lived on credit cards, etc.)
I flew him to North Carolina with me, drove him down to Vegas
and up to the WTO protests, and bought him a brand new grape iMac
as a parting gesture; in this light, to characterize me as ungenerous
is an injustice. I regret that our communication was poor on many
fronts, but our friendship was (and is) richer than you will ever
be able to understand. Askhim now what he thinks about me and
I am sure you will find that his evaluation will be much more
favorable!
This tendency towards disregarding the most basic tenets of objective
journalism (for Christ's sake, you're MEDIAREADER! you should
KNOW better!) in order to get your readers to leap to the conclusion
that I am a fitting scapegoat for the "selling out"
of your pathetic subculture is why I can no longer identify myself
as "punk rock". I hold this need to lynch one after
another success story from within your subculture as beneath contempt;
in light of my recent successes, your article was laughably out
of date the moment it was published. I have always considered
my career an exercise in service; I left a lucrative career in
the dot-com world in order to begin a meager existence in pursuit
of my hopes that free expression could make a difference in people's
lives, and I have many megabytes of thanks from people who have
found my efforts worthwhile. I don't need your approval to know
I'm doing good work; my readers and customers tell me so every
day.
It makes me sad that such poor effort should issue forth from
a journal which in other respects I hold in high regard. Certainly
my business is not above criticism, and I have definitely made
more than my share of mistakes in the past. But why do you insist
on holding me mute while YOU fucking judge me on criteria as terribly
personal as my FINANCIAL APTITUDE, for the love of God? By coming
across as authoritative during your dissection of my life's work,
you give yourselves the power of redefining reality according
to your own agenda. Would that I were critiqued by CNN or the
National Review instead! Why must your agenda include my destruction?
Could it be that I have violated a powerful taboo that exists
in punk rock circles against the "marketing of rebellion",
even though I have placed perhaps three ads (two in punk planet,
one in some other small 'zine I can't remember) during the six-year
history of my business? Have I ever read anything similarly trenchant
written about, say, the marketing logic of Victory or Fat, who
spend THOUSANDS on advertising to convince kids to buy their infinite
variations on the same insipid musical themes? Cue D. Boon: "Let
the products sell themselves!" My products do not sell because
of marketing; they sell because of their HONESTY - they FUCKING
RULE, they FOMENT REAL CHAOS, they START CONVERSATIONS, they TEACH
RADICALISM, and people SHOW THEM OFF to each other!
I have become a new man as a result of the difficulties I faced
in 1999. I have never been more proud of my project and my team,
and the fact that you and other punks seem to get such pleasure
in deriding me makes me want to puke.
I am a human being and I deserve respect and room to grow through
my troubles; by painting me like some kind of permanent cynical
asshole, WITHOUT EVEN HAVING THE COURTESY TO TALK TO ME, you have
done yourself and your readers a great disservice. I invite you
to talk to me directly, because in many ways Unamerican is a fascinating
project with an astonishing ability to affect people far outside
your little hardcore circle. I challenge you to ask me whatever
hard-hitting questions your brain trust can think of instead of
making hypotheses behind my back. Perhaps you will even have the
guts to do so; failing that, I certainly hope you at least see
fit to print this letter.
yours in solidarity,
!!!srini
ps: at least josh, unlike mimi, can write without sounding like
a blowhard PC idiot. his chops as a writer are acknowledged. |
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