Must See Not on TV: The Corporation

Blood, guts and glory! Sweatshops, riots, buy out and takeovers! Logos and spunky Ms. No Logo! Yes, the other anti-back door deal documentary with an all star cast: the surprisingly restrained and sensible wizened watchdog Noam Chomsky, cutenik No Logo princess Naomi Klein, middle-American burger and ball cap guy Michael Moore (yes Moore, but not too much), talking heads, hidden cams, Fox outfoxed (again!), granpappy moneybags Milton Friedman, a psychopath expert from the FBI, white ring around the collar CEOs, and as themselves, some of your favorites and mine, New World Order Famous Corporations, in their starring roles before and behind bars.

And now the rest of the story....

I just saw the award-winning documentary, "The Corporation," a film so cool and so hot it's got it's own hip website. "The Corporation" was released in early 2004, just a few months before Michael Moore's funnier and infamouser "Fahrenheit 9/11." 'F9/11' caught most of the spotlight, most of the money and most of the flak, but "The Corporation" makes the Bush leagues seem a bunch of B-team minors in the Big Leagues of Power a la Multi-National Globalization. Who are the Bushes and bin Ladens compared to IBM, ADM, Dow, Monsanto, Exxon, Nike, Coca-Cola, the dollar a day work force and Wally World?

Yes, "The Corporation" drives home its theme that politics and politicians are now bit players subservient to the behemoths of STUFF, the captains of industry, the engines of insinuating capitalism, coming to a continent and a closet near you, you and your own lust for goods being yet another product of the material machine.

"The Corporation" is not a dull read. It's a lively picture that takes some cues from MTV, David Letterman, "Leave it to Beaver" and maybe even "The Silence of the Lambs." Clips right out of a "Pleasantville" gone from naive paradise to brain-washing and pocket-picking hell - yes, we looked so fresh and charming in the 50s. Now, those days seem so naive we think, 'why didn't everybody see this coming? Them with their annual obsolescence tricks, they really played us for a bunch of chumps, didn't they? Why they sprayed insecticide down our clothes and sold us the toxic ropes to slowly hang ourselves.

One of the plain messages is that corporate power and fascism seem historically to rise at the same time - and to depend on one another. Beware, indeed.

But let it be known that there is one true hero in this film, an altruistic John Dean or Hamlet who is worth the time and worth the price of admission or rental all by himself, and that would be Ray Anderson, the unlikely and ever so deft and softly charismatic CEO of Interface Carpet, largest carpet manufacturer in the U.S. (26 factories on four continents, a million pounds of carpet a day, but the guy has gone green, a la Paul Hawkins' "The Ecology of Commerce," and he's not turning away or turning back.) Listen when Anderson speaks; I think his bountifully altruistic perspective will astound and perhaps even inspire you to increased vigilance and action. Three cheers for Mr. Anderson, the Homegrown hero CEO - and to the makers of "The Corporation." May it's DVD run (in a 2-disc set with 7 hours of extra features) go far, far, live long and prosper.

Meanwhile, keep up those boycotts of Exxxxxon, Wal-Schmart, Schmell, I,BM, Dow duke, Nike nuke, Monster-santo (dammit, especially Mon-stinkin'-santo) and MORE!