Merchants of Cool Pulled From Classroom

Douglas Rushkoff's exceptional documentary, The Merchants of Cool, was pulled out of a Dallas classroom after a parent complained. NPH is in a tizzy.

Merchants was the piece that first interested NPH in Douglas Rushkoff. It's a harsh critique of mass media corporations and their exploitation of teenagers for profit. MTV especially takes a beating. Rushkoff's insight in particularly valuable, because he points up the use of sexuality and insecurity by these corporations as a way to expose advertising blind spots and manipulate them for gain. It's very good commentary.

And, as any good commentary will, it makes use of the materials which it criticizes. So the MTV clip of Brittany Spears ripping her shirt off, the segments of films that feature nudity (while blurred out) are dropped into the documentary. They have to be; they are precisely the point.

So when a parent complains about the nature of the content and the piece gets pulled, who benefits? Do teenagers benefit because a censored and criticized version of what they're watching every day is no longer in their classroom? Or do the MTV's and other advertisers benefit because a critic with some teeth has been sidelined?

NPH is going with the latter.