Let me give you a pointer Chris. It is not the fact that you use the term ‘cunt in a shopping trolley’ that is worrying. It is the fact that when you think how can I express disapproval the term ‘cunt’ comes to your mind.

For example, when I think about you and your opinions, the terms facile, puerile and stupid come to mind. So much more descriptive. You now know that I think you are a complete idiot. No doubts on your part. Period

Ruth, the important word in that is all. This protest/art experiment/prank doesn’t do anything else (if it even does that). Other protests achieve, or at least aim to achieve, some greater purpose. This doesn’t even seek to make people think a bit more, because the given purpose behind it is so vague and trite that any supposed message is lost. And the comparison to Rosa Parks is fatuous; that was an act of direct civil disobedience. If the Bush administration had actually banned the placing of 1984 in the Current Events section, then I’d be well behind this, but unless that’s some obscure subsection of the PATRIOT Act that I wasn’t aware of, I’m not sure it’s an apt comparison.

The reason for the frustration on display here is that a lot of us feel increasingly alienated from a certain strand of supposedly progressive activism, that seems to view simple acts of mooning at authority as worthy and insightful in themselves; it seems symptomatic a smirking, disengaged complacency that views self-gratifying acts of pranksterism as sufficient action. I thought a large part of the point was that we’ve actually got the good arguments on our side; we don’t need to resort to empty displays of symbolism that are so vague and ill-thought out that we can’t even decide quite what they’re supposed to symbolise.

One’s local branch of Borders or Barnes & Noble, and the fact they keep current affairs from modern fiction separate, had no influence, direct or otherwise, on whether Bush got elected or not. The staff and customers who get inconvenienced for no reason at all; it’s not their fault things are the way it is, so why take it out on them?

Why did I get personal? Because it is personal. If you think protest should be about pranking and showing off, rather than doing something of note, then that shows you’re basically in it for the ego – you’re a dick and a showoff and need to be taken down a notch. If you think bookshop staff (and ordinary customers) are a fair target for your japery, then you’re a nasty and unfeeling wanker. If you think that Nineteen Eighty-Four can be used as a simple catch-all allegory of modern-day America, then you’re dogmatic and intellectually lazy to the extreme. These are all (IMHO) loathsome personality traits, which can be and should be shown up for what they are.