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BY DAVID FUTRELLE | Just as Julia Child from time to time finds herself hankering for McDonald's french fries, even the most devoted highbrow critics find it hard to resist the lure of the omnipresent cultural junk food that fills our media universe. Marxist philosophers thrill to music videos; feminist thinkers secretly devour romance novels on the side. I won't even begin to list my own guilty pleasures; I have more of them than I do innocent ones.

And so I understand how hard it must be to be an editor at the Baffler, the Chicago journal of cultural criticism that takes its pleasure (insofar as it takes any pleasure at all) in sneering at anything and everything that reeks of filthy lucre. The Baffler first gained attention back in 1992 with a ferocious assault on Gen-X stereotypes; the next year the journal took on the corporate co-optation of "alternative culture."

Since then -- as the Baffler editors explain in the introduction to "Commodify Your Dissent," a collection of essays taken from the journal -- contributors have focused their ire on "business culture and the culture business," firing angry "salvos" at everyone from windy management consultant Tom Peters to Wired magazine. Their favorite villains: the corporate "rebels" who take a smug pride in their (purportedly) revolutionary, "out of the box" thinking -- even while they rack up hefty profits and further entrench the power of capital over that of the much-abused proles.

No cultural figure or institution is too insignificant to escape the wrath of the Baffler's bombast. Among the names on the Baffler enemies list: The Body Shop, Bon Jovi, Borders, Tina Brown, Coca-Cola, Condé Nast, Celine Dion, Donna Karan, Duran Duran, "Entertainment Tonight," Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Benjamin Franklin, Bill Gates, Joseph Goebbels, the Home Shopping Network, Hugo Boss, Madonna, "The Match Game," M.C. Hammer, McDonald's, the Monkees, Moon Pies, People, Pizza Hut, "The Preppie Handbook," Henry Rollins, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Alvin Toffler, Vanilla Ice, Eddie Vedder, Wal-Mart, Wham!, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Even the seemingly innocuous Moon Pie becomes a symptom of "postindustrial malaise," a "faintly toxic snack treat."

Although a few of these essays are written with a slightly lighter touch -- like Jennifer Brostrom's engagingly chilly account of the cultish appeal of the Franklin Day Planner -- the Baffler has grown far too earnest for its own good. Sure, the journal's bluntness can be, at times, quite refreshing -- particularly when compared with the typical pomo bouillabaisse that passes for criticism in today's academy. But after a while even the most jaded corporation-hating reader will feel the need to come up for air.

Years ago, faced with the prefabricated freshness of "The Sound of Music," movie critic Pauline Kael found herself crankily wondering if there weren't "perhaps one little Von Trapp who didn't want to sing his head off." And so I ask: Isn't there one Baffler editor who sometimes finds himself humming along to a catchy Coke jingle? Who ogles the celebrity photos in People at the dentist's office? Who craves a Moon Pie?
SALON | Nov. 12, 1997

David Futrelle lives in Chicago. He is a regular contributor to Salon.