Not Like a Deadhead Odyssey
April 11th, 2001By Naomi Klein As soon as I wrote the sentence, I deleted it: "Is this really what we wanta movement of meeting stalkers, following the trade bureaucrats like they're the Grateful Dead?" It could be taken out of context, I thought; better take it out. Then I put it back in: The context was clear, and I was being paranoid. If you let your critics steal your sense of humour, they have already won. Paranoia, I've since learned, can be a healthy impulse. That sentence, which was first published almost a year ago in the U.S. magazine The Nation, has been following me around like . . . oh, forget it. In The Economist, on CBC Radio, in The Globe and Mail just last week, it has been used exactly as I'd feared: to paint anti-corporate protesters as a roving band of thrill-seekers, in it for the party, not the politics. (On the upside, Deadheads are now convinced that I alone understand them: "Duuude," they say to me. "It's so true what you wrote because Dead shows were all about community.") In fact, the sentence never referred to the culture of the protests (though I can't deny the...