If you haven't read the article, please do so here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/10/amanda-palmers-kickstarter-scandal.html
Now, I'm not going to deny a level of personal bias: Amanda Palmer is an inspiration to me as a musician and as a person. I have been a fan of hers since high school, and I will continue to support her work, despite the most recent backlash on her.
That being said, the amount of ignorance and pandering involved in this article is astounding. Joshua Clover handles explaining how a Kickstarter project works as if it were this insidious, bizarre tool used to swindle innocent, and apparently stupid fans into giving her money. He goes on to describe the backlash as Palmer struggling to capitalize on her fans devotion by having them play for free, painting her as this "moustache-twirling boss," apparently out to get rich quick off of her art, citing her using a rather suspiciously titled "Oompa-Loompa Defense," in which, according to her, "If my fans are happy and my audience is happy and the musicians on stage are happy, where’s the problem?”
There is a necessary level of oppression involved for the "happy worker" mindset to work. The Oompa-Loompas themselves were unable to effectively voice their opinions with their work, which is why Wonka was able to assert that they liked it. Her fans are not all living in caves, on in some strange island, and we all speak coherent, modern languages. We have access to the internet, her blog, Facebook, Twitter, and we are all more than happy to voice our opinions of her work. She isn't paying us off to lie, and tell people we're happy "working" for her, so I would just trust that Palmer made that claim in confidence.
This would be a different argument if she was crowdsourcing touring accompaniment. She is asking for local musicians, her fans specifically, to participate in her music. Every action that she has made with this project has been towards lessening the gap between musicians and their audience, and I don't see how paying them to do one show helps that. If anything, it creates a formality, a sense that Palmer isn't interested in the people. Paying them puts her fans in the category of convenient studio musicians, rather than people invested in her work, who want to be on stage with her, who want to play and share this music.
As I said in the beginning, I come from personal bias, and perhaps I am a slack-jawed toady, jumping at cruel Madame Palmer's beck and call, but structurally speaking, nothing in Palmer's behavior has ever suggested an insidious motive, much less one for financial gain. Also, we are talking about music, not accounting or engineering, or construction. I would like to believe that there is a level of joy involved in this act: these musicians are doing what they love, after all.
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