“Lewis and Clark didn’t return from their trip and say, ‘Well, we didn’t find the Northwest Passage, but we did find ourselves.’ But that is the spirit of Bobo travel. Our travel dollars are investments in our own human capital. We don’t just want to see famous sights; we want to pierce into other cultures. …
Ah, Texture
“But to demonstrate their superiority to such people, the educated elites prefer to build environments full of natural irregularities. For the Bobos, roughness connotes authenticity and virtue. So the educated elites love texture . . . Really rich Bobos will hire squads of workmen with ball-peen hammers to pound some rustic wear into their broad …
Simple Rhythms of Life
“The educated class has conquered all and hegemonized its Bobo culture over affluent regions from coast to coast. Now the Babbitt lion can mingle with the beatnik lamb at a Pottery Barn, a Smith & Hawken, a Museum Shop, a Restoration Hardware, a Nature Company, a Starbucks, or any of the other zeitgeist-heavy institutions that …
And the Jaws of the Papist Trap Snap Shut
Well, the truth is finally out. You can read it here.
Father Hunger
One of our local critics has gone into print again, reiterating his story, to which he is sticking, that we are somehow “calling for the execution of homosexuals.” Which he says is “just plain ugly.” This canard has been answered more than once, but I want to do it yet again, just for the record. …
Culture Pouts
“Avant-gardism, money, status, Le Chic, and even the 1960s idea of sexiness – it all buzzed around Pop Art. The place, without any question, was Leo Castelli’s gallery at 4 East Seventy-seventh Street. Castelli had Johns, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, most of the heavies. It was there that the Culture buds now hung …
Bohemian Lockstep
“It was all sheer rhetoric, of course, the antibourgeois sing-along of bohemia, standard since the 1840s, as natural as breathing by now and quite marvelously devoid of any rational content . . .” [Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word (New York, Bantam Books, 1975), p. 48.]
Odd Bedfellows
After I posted DeeplyGrieved.com (a few posts down), my wife mentioned to me another important “indicator that something is screwy” that I had missed. Once someone has enlisted in what I call “the fellowship of the grievance” (FOG) all other differences with other members of that fellowship fade into the background. Adversaries become cobelligerents, and …
Lonely Artists Congregate
“Likewise in the United States: believe men, you can get all the tubes of Winsor & Newton paint you want in Cincinnati, but the artists keep migrating to New York all the same . . . You can see them six days a week . . . hot off the Carey airport bus, lined up …
Bless Me, What Do They Teach Them In These Schools?
One of the posts yesterday on justice generated a really fruitful discussion, and here is a follow up to some of those issues. When Peter and Susan go to the old professor about Lucy’s weird behavior, he gives them a basic lesson. Edmund was saying sane things, but his character was problematic. Lucy was saying …