Curious to see the comment by 'absurd' taking issue with the 'sophomoric' analysis and misspelling "Althusser" - have you heard of the internet, absurd?  It provides a cool way to check the spelling of those half-forgotten funny foreign names from your sophomore days.  And Shecky, the suggestion that Foucault saw gay sub-texts all over the shop doesn't square with my reading of him - wasn't he more obsessed with the ubiquity of power than homo - or for that matter any - sexuality?

The article is plainly a playful piece that makes some nice points about the commodification of everyday life for youngsters, while name-dropping Marx, Gramsci and Frank, which I'd have thought was a pretty appropriate lineage based on US style cultural analysis.  My guess is that Mr Rybicki had his tongue closely proximate to his cheek throughout this writing, and had a chuckle upon completion. 

I'm old enough, as a forty-something, to recall a time when the 8 to 10 year old consumer market didn't exist at all, and the common expectation was that parents would be the sole drivers of the consumption of such kids.  The very fact that this is now an identifiable marketing demographic is intriguing to me still, especially when one considers what is spent on the demographic in advertising and like dollars. 

Contra the Lord of the Flies reference, Mr Rybicki's point is not that children are 'monkey see/monkey do'.  It is that evolving cultural norms now often directly reflect the economic interests of global corporations, and that the commodification of everyday life continues its penetration into all spheres (most rapidly in the USA, as the capitalist nation par excellence, I might add).

And the piece was kinda funny.