Evil Empire 113
To some, the patterns for these stuffed animals and shawls serve as
a cliché of the culture industry, plied by Reader’s Digest or First as the
soft, cloth equivalent of a Betty Crocker cake. But they were channels
for the expression of love. The quantification of “love hours” flattens
the texture of real relationships, just as the wall hanging distorts three-
dimensional stuffed animals into a flat medium. The viewer’s discom-
fort is only alleviated by realizing that social provisioning, rather than
interpersonal emotional debit accounts, can cure whatever “debts” the
stuffed animals evoke. Indeed, if the state wants something done, let it
pay. The real economy can then put some constraint on the quantitative
governance of culture, behavior, and thought itself.