American Culture in Recession?

We’re not a very interesting culture at the moment. Not in literature, not in moviemaking, and discounting the Marsalis clan, not in music either. Television is in an oddly creative spurt if you look past the reality shows and the news networks’ dismal fictions and colon-centered “news-you-can-use” posing as information. But if television is the new gold standard of cultural creativity, the bar has dropped dangerously low. It’s surprising, considering that from The Great Gatsby to Bill Gates the United States has been inspiration, leader and trend-setter in business, technology, law, human and civil rights, popular and high arts, every science imaginable and unimagined not so long ago, all the while managing to save the world a couple of times and send greetings to the four corners of the universe along the way. Not a bad run for an adolescent country. What a reversal lately. If we’re not plundering, bombing or boring the rest of the world with preachy and occasionally lethal crusades, we’re being plundered at home by rhetoric and political lawlessness out of character even for this Republic of excess s and pay-per-lobbyist corruption. Read the rest...