Unless the printouts are some kind of ultracreepy hate-speech or, I agree with CT. It's communal entertainment. Read the right wing, e. coli infested rants. They will sharpen your mind! Just wash your hands. Print a few gems from Salon and balance the washroom's library.

A suggestion. You could start by printing out this column, and leaving it! Then every time you see something that strikes your fancy in Salon (and do check http://www.alternet.org for other great stories that will fit with your philosophy), hit Print, and store up for your next restroom visit...

Cary you're too kind.

After putting up with co-workers who for years insisted that everyone naturally wanted to listen to Paul Harvey at lunch, this has evolved (sorry) to employees who listen to Limbaugh to get fired up. Go by a desk that has a nice display of conservative literature tastefully arranged on their desk. Some Coulter, some Hannity, a nice graphic of abortions performed in the US to date - graphics worthy of USA Today.

Then go to the gym where Fox has to be going on all the TVs and of course at full volume. One isn't enough?

And then you just want to go to the crapper for some solitude...

It is passive aggressive.

First of all, I love the spirit of it, and the sense of a communal experience. Secondly, I love, love, love the refusal to demonize conservatives. I think I'm middle of the road myself, but I have friends who are both very liberal and very conservative, and the way they don't even see each other as human anymore is disturbing. The idea that both liberals and conservatives can be loving, good people who care tremendously about the future of the country, but who have reached quite different conclusions about how to achieve that, seems to have been utterly forgotten.

And it's a shame. A shame both in terms of the close-mindedness that pervades this country on all sides, and the refusal to see how complex life and experence is, how difficult to know the correct solution to our problems.

I had just read an article by Susan Sontag today in which she states "Almost everyone in our debauched culture invites us to simplify reality, to despise wisdom" and she goes on to endorse "articulating a complex view of the human heart and the contradictions inherent in living in literature and history." We need to see the complexity of life, and understand why people come to different conclusions, or offer different solutions, than we do.

I am so grateful for Cary's response.

I once took down a beefcake calendar in the women's restroom that was hung (so to speak) directly in front of the toilet. I just placed it on the floor as my passive (or /aggressive) protest against hetero-inyourface-iocity. Later, a coworker came by my office and exclaimed, "Someone took down the calendar in the bathroom and stomped on it!" I almost said, "I didn't stomp on it!" but luckily my natural reticence kicked in and I just smiled and "oh-wow'd" a little bit.

OK, here's another one. I went to use the restroom in the library where I worked, and one of the elderly (stereotypically gray-hair-in bun and sensible-shoes-type) librarians was coming out at the same time. She looked surprised to see me--even fearful--and I wondered why. Inside, I found that "someone" had written "God the Father" on the back of the door. I imagined her guilt over defacing library property, even in the service of a good cause... and her chagrin at possibly being caught. She wrote it too high up for me to stomp on it.

Leaving a note in the bathroom thanking the person who has been leaving the right-wing material "for the awesome toilet paper."

That this letter was written, or that this letter was answered.

I have a "sprayer" on the floor of my building. I know who she is, but haven't seen her do the deed since I unmasked her. It's not like we work in a goddamn bus station--I am sure that this bathroom is cleaned at least three times a day. It is only dirty when they squirter gets through with it. What kind of grown woman sprays her piss all over a toilet set and then just walks away? Grrr.

Dear (oh dear?!) "Cary Tennis" (and/or anyone else who may be logging onto this site at this or some future moment), I am a 75 1/2 year old female person who has just successfully come through her first surgical (as to instruments removing body parts and inserting acrylics & etc. in their previous place) procedure into my once-upon-a-time not previously thus invaded body. I am, therefore, feeling _quite_ silly, and have (therefore) been LAFFING a LOT for a LONG TIME [well, atleast it feels to ME to be long?! :-)], so what I would like at this rather odd and peculiar (for me) moment to know, is simply this:

"Cary Tennis" (as per carefully online last remaining (?) shred of personal privacy carefully preserved online pseudonym), DID YOU MAKE THIS GUY'S LETTER UP???

Is it PURE FICTION?

You, CARY TENNIS, in all your Robes of Authority, playing games with us pore li'l fools paying extra Shekels to be able to ?talk? a little here, while you post fictional exchanges with fictional letter-writer[s]?

Please, Dir Sir, Come "clean", o.k.? [Ho hum and tiddly pum]

Sign me:

Weird, Doubtful, and Irrationally Happy and eagerly awaiting your (probably unlikely because I don't even know whether you read these posts here) reply,

Salonmarte

What if that "someone" who left those magazines happened to be management, and endorsed by the company itself? Anything countering the company's politics is likely to be shredded by management. What's next, advertising? Email? Rallies? It's enough to bring my churning stomach to a halt in that stall. This is American marketing at its very worse. This is crap that didn't hit the bowl. Sometimes the reading material left around is enough to warn a person off from doing business with a company or individual.

Take, for instance, my own experience almost three years ago at a ob/gyn's office when visiting her for the first time: I began noticing almost immediately the overwhelming presence of evangelical, conservative Christian material throughout the office. Though the doctor seemed friendly at the time of the initial visit, it occurred to me that we probably didn't see eye to eye when it came to certain matters. Her questions about my relationship with a Northern European and my marital status were invasive and inappropriate. Clearly, stirrups and 700 Club don't mix! Six months later, I parted ways with that practice after being treated shabbily by one of the other doctors in the practice because I had the nerve to ask him to call in a prescription for the morning-after pill. Reading material left around are not just decoration or amusement; it's a map of attitudes, beliefs, and values. I should have jumped off that examination table the moment I saw the "crap" floating around that office, but at least I was alerted to their ideological approach, and was able to make some decisions about the care of my body.

As Dionne Brand once wrote, "no language is neutral," and to that I would add, neither is propaganda or where it is placed. As a consumer I was able to make choices about who could and couldn't push their values on me, but the letter-writer is a worker who trapped in a crapper with right-wing crap, and its stink probably doesn't stop at the men's room door. We've already seen political maneuvering by corporations in action over the last 20 years, and I think it's naive to not see that the right and the left are at war with each other in this country. Bathroom stalls are where people should be able to forget rank in a common struggle to release the toxins from their bodies--but I suppose nothing is sacred when we are at war.

On the other hand, I think that this particular corporate entity could enforce its own rules about harassment and mutual respect, and forbid employees from leaving any materials that are not related to company business. That's enforceable on many levels. But as I noted above, corporations are quite capable of pushing their own politics (Haliburton, anyone?), so I wouldn't be surprised if the guilty culprits happened to be the company itself.