514 Comments

1. Reader:

> Horace called this reactionary nostalgia the delusion of a laudator temporis acti

You may know that there’s an outstanding Classico-literary blog by just that name:

http://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com

Oct 17, 2009 - 9:49 pm 2. Smee:

I think you may have just come up with the most insightful description of what is happening in my life at the moment.

Halliburton for Botox, indeed.

Oct 17, 2009 - 10:15 pm 3. Jimmy J.:

Although I am somewhat older than you, your description of your retreat from pop culture describes my course over the last 16 years almost exactly.

I sometimes think that I finally became an adult after so many years of indulging myself in TV, football, movies, and trivial pursuits that were primarily diversions from the real things that were going on around me. Or maybe pop culture just changed enough that it no longer interests me. I’ve always been interested in national politics, business and economics but not at the level of the last 16 years.

I think free agency ruined the NFL. We used to have the same players on the same teams year after year. We knew the players and they were our guys, win or lose. Now it’s a new roster every season. The sporstcasting has become a sports bull session among the announcers. When I watch a game these days I often turn the sound off and just watch the game.

At any rate, I find it quite satisfying to learn that I’m not alone and in very good company.

Oct 17, 2009 - 10:21 pm 4. Cowboy:

I’m in that same boat, Victor. I may be further advanced, though. I’m beginning to not even pay attention to the politics and the goings-on in current events. Perhaps there’s a burn-out factor on that though, since I’ve been keenly following things and thinking about them tremendously following 9/11. My concern has always been the reversal of troubling trends I see in demographics, in the incessant onslaught of postmodern philosophies, and our continuing economic problems. It’s a been a tough slog with few breaks. I took up woodworking, making stuff. That’s what I want to do now when I get home, instead of hitting the blogs and news sites, and read a book a little before bed. That’s pretty much it.

Oct 17, 2009 - 10:26 pm 5. TG:

VDH: My wife and I had the same take on popular culture years ago. We have rarely gone to the movies in the last 20 years; instead we rent old ones or watch them on cable. If you pay attention to the “art” on DVD or VHS cases in video stores, what jumps out at you is all the violence and creepy sex that is being sold, bought and watched in the US on a daily basis. Anyway, we first realized something was very wrong with Hollywood back when we took our young children to the first Batman movie. We were shocked to see how dark that film was (and remember it was heavily marketed to boys between the ages of 5 and 12 –lunchboxes, toys, bed linens, pajamas, etc.). Batman was psychotic and his arch enemy, the Joker, disfigured women (kinky strumpets) by throwing acid on their faces, etc. We were very careful in what we let them view thereafter. Our culture is ill, defeatist and depraved, and it is affecting every aspect of our lives for the worse.

Oct 17, 2009 - 10:31 pm 6. Zach:

I’m surprised by how much this applies to me, and I’m relatively young (32). I do enjoy the NBA, but my team is the most old-school team in the league (the Utah Jazz) with a classic old-school coach (Jerry Sloan). I enjoy the NFL, but my team is the Colts, another of the classy hard-work teams (though the owner’s involvement in the Limbaugh debacle was disappointing).

It’s not us changing. It’s the culture around us decaying. TV is generally terrible and insultingly lazy. I suffered through Transformers 2 (went with the guys from the office); what an awful film. Then I went home and watched Once Upon a Time in the West for the first time; I guess it’s an Italian film (technically), but why can’t America make films like that? Why won’t the culture demand it? I think too many people are content with giant robots and Megan Fox; I don’t think they even know that more is possible.

Anyway, plus one to dropping out.

Oct 17, 2009 - 10:58 pm 7. EvilDave:

I too have dropped out of movies, TV, and music (for the most part). Long ago going all DVD in terms of TV use.
When I go back to my parent’s house the idea of commercials is just foreign. Especially since my web surfing is well ad-blocked too.

What concerns me is how this insulation will affect my kids (4yrs). I have built up a good resistance to advertisements. And, when I was a kid common pop culture was important (e.g., Star Wars, Duran Duran, The Cure, etc.).

I wonder if by insulating myself I am preventing my kids from building up a resistance to ads (like a resistance to viruses) and the ability to bond with their less-sheltered peers in schools. Or, with 500 channels (vs. 4 or 5 with UHF included) is a shared pop culture even that important.
I myself have to YouTube commercials to understand my families jokes when I go home (e.g., ShamWow).

Oct 17, 2009 - 11:18 pm 8. Gaffe Prices:

Just arrived from a Ed Driscoll link to a Jennifer Warnes vid (link to) ‘First we take Manhattan’. And then proceeded to a live performance of ‘Song of Bernadette’. Incredible. Not a singer of her ability and interpretation since that time.

Rock and Roll, and Rock have not been viable idioms in, what, decades now. Warnes could even do both Rock or/and Ballad.

Songwriting. Scant if anything. Can’t mention anything new. It’s debatable if Rock and Roll obscured too many other style’s, but its difficult to blame it since it was a highly flexible hybrid. And it must be remembered that first generation rock guitar was based on those who had mastered the ‘blues’ idiom (Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Steve Hackett etc), whereas subsequent generations had only mastered the initial rock/blues guitar hybrid (Stevie Ray Vaughn being an exception), but not the original ‘blues’ form, as so it started to become a rehash.

I tend to lay the blame with two culprits. First, Louise Ciccone for bringing the sleazy -ness of show business from offstage to onstage, now its the banal norm, even on Super Bowl Half Time’s during prime time (Janet Jackson). Second, rap. Nothing musical. Flaunts ’sampling’ byte’s of other artists works, taunting lawsuits, and getting away with it. What singing there is seems to have cribbed the Whitney Houston Catalog of all that it was worth.

If you watch old musicals, as in The Music Man, the tension was between the elements of the big city and rural life. I think the Bauhaus city structure has won, and what remains is no regional musical hybrids, nor harmony; no respect for the interpreter of song (e.g. the Jennifer Warnes example above) but there were others.

In the movie ‘Fame’, the students who were admitted to the Performing Arts school; were disabused of the notion that they were being rewarded for their musical talents by admittance; they were instructed that they would have to earn it, and that no amount of talent would mitigate the circumstances of the competitiveness of show business.

That’s all gone now. Nothing to replace it.

I would also stress the void left by the loss of the ‘variety show’ on television. Those who got summer replacement shows included Johnny Cash, Bobby Vinton, the Smother’s Brothers, and others. I don’t think “American Idol” works the same way. it emphasizes the prize and the mimicking of accepted style’s rather than the uniqueness of a new artist abilities.

I don’t even despair the dearth of entertainment in America so much anymore as simply accept it. Even if no explanation suffices, it still amounts to the equilivilent of a stock market crash in terms of the chasm spawned in a place that created so many idioms as the United States.

Oct 17, 2009 - 11:49 pm 9. William Frere McNamara:

Dr. Hanson:

Some of the changes in your habits and behaviors that you describe very much parallel my own. I believe everyone of “Baby-Boomer” age (I’m 56) recognizes that living with the veneer of civilization, which we enjoyed during our childhood, provided for a certain degree of dignity and pride, instead of the current “contest” to see who can be the most irreverent. Thank you for your wise words.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:17 am 10. Doug Wright:

VDH: actually it’s all your fault, mine too, my wife’s also, plus some of my relatives and friends. But, most likely, not the fault of the news media or of the entertainment media, after all they are what they wish to be. It can’t be the fault of the media because those worker bees are all trying to save the world as they wish it to be.

At the age of 72, I hope to see a new president in my lifetime who’s proud of being an American, supports democratic forms of foreign governments, such as Honduras’, but hectors totalitarian forms of government. Maybe I could even see a TV show or movie where Americans are the good guys, when they’re good. But, real in the sense that the show / movie is based on real behaviors. Or else, good portrayals of far out Sci-Fi phony baloney adventure. Of course, good acting would help, with people who seem to understand how the world works, especially those outside the media world goldfish bowl.

It would be great to have news media print publications that have factual articles in news sections and opinions in the Op-Ed pages. But, the print media will have to find a way to have the same kind of transparency that web forms of blog media have; a saving grace of blogs is that false or erroneous statements get identified quickly much of the time and those that wallow in feel-good PC “journalism” pay a price.

Somehow, we’ll muddle through and wind up with a new realm, which might just hold together long enough to be meaningful. And, that this new world order, or disorder, we’re going into has value for us. Still, what’s unsettling is for me much of today’s environment is not relevant!

Lastly, my critique above is not complete nor sufficient, yet it may well be an effective start, What’s missing can be defined later.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:22 am 11. lawrence Kohn:

Professor Hanson: I wish you had added Kate Hepburn, Joanne Woodward, Angela Landsbury (pre the detective show). NPR-about 7 years ago the President came to Madison WI to deal with complaints about coverage of Israel’s response to Arafat’s suicide bombing war. I gave him a detailed critique of a morning edition series and he said he would get back so I gave him my email. I prefaced my critique by telling him I listened every morning while I had breakfast and I was a contributer. Never heard from him. I no longer contribute and now I read you while I eat my breakfast.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:38 am 12. Joe Toboni:

Yes time 4. But I wonder if you do watch college sports (USC doesn’t count as they are pros).

I think Leo can act like a real man when he wants to, it’s the scripts that need reform.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:45 am 13. Dr. J:

I too have dropped off from the cultural radar (though to call today’s dreck “culture” seems a bit perverse), but more because I am physically removed from it. I relocated to a job in India (one way of avoiding the US recession straight out of college) and have largely enjoyed doing it. Removing oneself from the ceaseless TV static of US public discourse gives one a chance to refocus. Experiencing an unpleasant alternative, I now have a much better idea of what Western culture is about, and just how precious it is.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:22 am 14. stu:

Your sentiments are an eloquent expression of my thoughts about our culture. I think however you tuned out of professional basketball too early if you missed watching Micheal Jordan during his time in Chicago. I know many people who had no interest in that sport but became transfixed by watching his exploits on the court. Two of those you mentioned brought back fond memories. Dizzy was one of a kind as a baseball announcer. His sidekick, usually Pee Wee Reese, was always affectionately referred to as “Podner”. I was a big fan of Otis Redding, and really saddened when I learned of his untimely death. He was a musical genius.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:55 am 15. vb:

You describe my feelings exactly. When I read reviews of movies, I have no desire to see them. They sound so superficial, politically correct, and narcissistic. Music itself is overshadowed by the trashy headlines I see about the performer’s life. And all that is topped by the lectures we get about toilet paper usage.

I prefer the company of small children and real adults, not the media coverage of immature celebrities (some of whom are well past retirement age). I tend to read biographies and histories, but I also like coming of age literature. For me, the latter is like a search for what is no longer being passed on. I just read Little Heathens and found it to be a treasure trove of things we now forget to teach the young.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:08 am 16. JamesA:

Dr. Hanson, you are not alone in your withdrawal from the post-modern.

I do not own a television, no longer read any print journalism, and the radio antenna on my car was snapped off three years ago by vandals and I haven’t bothered to replace it. The only reason I am even vaguely familiar with the current crop of celebrities comes from standing in supermarket checkout lines and glancing at tabloid magazine covers. In the recent Rush Limbaugh-NFL dustup, I was shocked to learn that the Rams aren’t in Los Angeles anymore. The only movie theatre complex in my community went under this summer, and I didn’t know it for months.

I watch old studio system-era movies on DVDs. I plug my iPod to my car stereo as I drive and listen to music no longer welcomed on a radio station’s playlist. I’m reading a lot more these days: histories, novels and poetry.

What makes this all slightly sad, slightly humorous is that I write for the entertainment industry (thankfully not the Hollywood portion of it). Only the fact that the verities of life are eternal even in fiction and that online social networking (Facebook, Twiter, etc al.) allows me direct contact with my actual audience affords me the ability to still function in near-isolation.

I feel like Edward Grey sometimes. The lights seem to be going out all over Western culture, and I wonder if they will be lit again in my lifetime. The boomers’ lifelong goal of completely obliterating their parents’ world is nearing completion.

It may be that people like you and I are doing the right thing by withdrawing. We are the monks cloistering ourselves in our monasteries with our Latin texts ahead of the coming darkness preserving the old knowledge for the better days that will surely come. And unlike those medieval monks, we have the world’s libraries at our fingertips and the samizdat of the web to connect us in our isolation.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:14 am 17. Ampontan:

This is partly, I think, due to age (we’re roughly the same), and therefore inevitable. Feelings of “been there, done that” arise more frequently these days.

I haven’t watched a movie all the way through in five years, and I can’t remember the last time I got past the two-minute mark for any television program.

I haven’t watched television news since 1980, after a particularly egregious bit of nonsense from Walter Cronkite (regarding the Democratic convention that year). Apart from the ability to confirm personality traits of political candidates–which doesn’t take long–the printed word is more practical.

I lived in the Bay Area and remember those Walsh and Plunkett teams, but after the vicarious thrill of one or two championships, sports on television gets repetitive.

These days, I find myself reading non-fiction, listening to Renaissance, Baroque, older jazz, and the classical musical traditions of non-Europeans, taking physical exercise, and writing.

The other stuff I don’t miss at all.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:36 am 18. Chuck R:

I am in the middle of a Vince Flynn novel. I’m reading him because I saw him on Glenn Beck; I had not heard of him before. Why could not a group of millionaires get together and back a film of one of his novels. A film in which the CIA saves American lives by killing some Moslem terrorits. This is an easily accomplished business model. So why is it not happening? Then I too would go to a movie again. I was a big “24″ fan and just loved Jack Bauer. But this past season when Chole came on and promoted global warming…oops…climate change, I was through. So why can’t the folks at Big Hollywood get together and start making films that promote America, capitalism and the righteous military? Come on you guys, you have the time, experience and know where the money is. Get going.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:37 am 19. ~Paules:

Professor, you are not the only one. I gave up my TV three years ago. I got tired of flipping through a hundred channels only to discover there was absolutely nothing worth watching. I can recall when Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom was television’s high point of the week for a kid. I rallied briefly when cable began to offer The Discovery Channel and TLC. But when genuine science and documentary were replaced by junkyard wars, I gave up.

My interest in sports has gone the same route. I gave up on baseball with the retirement of Cal Ripken Jr. I followed the Washington Redskins under Coach Joe Gibbs during the glory days. His teams always had class and character. The only reason I tune in now is to hear the familiar voices of Sam and Sonny on the radio.

My psychological withdrawal is being matched now by a material need to go Galt. I’ve suffered significant wealth destruction over the last year and would rather beat a strategic retreat than risk losing everything. I’ve become aware that my future in public education is more dependent on the whims of government clerks than on my own efforts. Promises made by the local teacher’s retirement board are no longer worth a bucket of spit. Tragic but true.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:22 am 20. Tina Trent:

Give Updike a second thought. He alone, of all of the post-war novelists, observed with an actually egalitarian eye; he documented, not celebrated, the losses listed here, and, above all else, he felt an epic love for America and Americans — thus no Nobel.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:24 am 21. Kathleen:

Bravo!!!

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:38 am 22. Mike Myers:

So it has come to this–”Goodbye to All That”. Well Robert Graves said it first–and went on to a distinguished further career as a writer.

I find it ever easier to turn off the talk show hosts; ignore television; skip the movies; and read a book or go for a walk.
Much of current external life is simply not worth one’s attention or time.

But as for paying one’s taxes, being polite to others etc. all of those are civic duties and one performs them.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:04 am 23. Gordon DeSpain:

Mr Hansen,

I agree on every point, but, I am curious that a Hostorian would not see the parallels with past Civilizations. The corruption of the upper classes, the degredation of the common Citizen, the unbelievable excesses of morals and squandering of the public Treasure building Monuments to themselves while hoarding wealth among the “elite.”

This travels hand-in-hand with the rise of a Matriarchal class of Great Ladies looking over the Parapets of their Palaces, sneering at the Hoi Polloi while brandishing their “Weapons of Genderbat” to win Positions of Great Power. These are all part of the 20 markers of the “End of Golden Ages”

I found this list in a 20 Volume set of Time/Life Books, in my Sister-in-Laws Library, safely tucked away in her Den. It was called, “The Rise and Fall of Civilization,” and, the final Volume, Volume 20, was titled, “The End of Golden Ages.

Since then they’ve vanished from Libraries all over American, along with the Set that replaced them. I’ve found 5 sets of the original Series, and, 3 of the follow-on, all broken sets with no sign of a Volume that defines “the End of Golden Ages.”

As near as I can replicate the markers, they are:

1. About 150 to 200 years into the life of the Civilization, Women begin rising to positions of Great Power, resulting in…
2. A Tsunami of Rules Regulations, Policies, Proceedures, Edicts, Decrees, Taxes, Taxes, Taxes, Rees, Permits, Licenses, all flowing from…
3. A burgeoning fleet of Agencies, Bureaus, Departments, Offices and Lone Tyrants as “Government Service” becomes a desirable profession for the sons of Great Ladies…
4. Imbalance of Trade as the Upper Class stops doing business with local Artisans, Crafts, Skills, Trades, Engineers and Industry, having discovered a younger, more vibrant Civilization, which unleashes a flood of Imported Exotic Goods, resulting in…
5. The Flight of Capital to Foreign Ports, and, a rising tide of exotic Imported goods that the Great Ladies cannot resist because the common Citizen can’t afford them…
6. The Flight of Industry to those same Foreign Ports, with less Regulation and Taxes of all kinds, leading to…
7. The Flight of Crafts, Skills, Trades, Artisans, Engineers, and, Builders of all types to those same Foreign Ports seeking jobs…because their jobs went away, swiftly vanishing in their native Land (We, the community of Expats are proof of this).
8. The denigration and pushing away of the Citizen Soldier, leading to…
9 The rise of a Professional Soldiery (in the form of Mercenaries), as the Great Ladies notice that even their Bodyguards are Men of the common citizenry.
10. Importation and hiring of Greek and other Trained Men of War as Bodyguards (Bodyguards have deposed more Monarchs than any other class of person).
11. Meanwhile, the Great Ladies are hopping from Bed to Bed ensuring that their now coddled Sons (Artists, Poets, Writers, Sculptors, etc, taught to “feel their feminen side”) will receive commissions as Officers of the new Professional Soldiery, with spiffy Uniforms, and, shiny cerimonial Swords…that they never bother to learn how to use.
12. The Ladies, in the meantime, have purged that Palace and all Government Offices of “Men of Violence,” and, peopled them with less agressive Bureaucrats. They push the “Men of Violence,” Men of the People, out to the Frontiers of the Nation, so they will not corrupt those around them with knowledge of Fighting and War…and, Weapons.

There are eight more Markers listed in that Volume, but, the last is the most important. When the Great Ladies decide to civilize the citizenry, the first thing they start wheedling, conniving, and, plotting amongst their friends to ban are Weapons in the hands of the Common Citizen. “The people don’t need Weapons,” they say, “We have enough men and Weapons to protect everyone. If the People have Weapons they’ll be fighting amongst themselves, killing each other…it’ll cause Sedition and Rebellion. We must do something to stop them, we can’t allow the people to have Weapons.”

Marker #20 is when the Great Ladies finally achieve their objective of disarming the entire nation. Within 20 years of this point, one Genration to reach adulthood, that Civilization falls into Footnotes at the bottom of pages in dusty Tomes nobody reads: an Alexander crosses the Bosporus, or, an Obama climbs the Hill.

I need Volume 20 from the Time/Life series, “The Rise and Fall of Cinilization,” published in the late 70’s, or early 80’s. If anyone can offer any help, please do so. I have one set at my brothers house, but, it is one of the broken Sets. If I weren’t in Baghdad, I’d look up the IBN Number, and, any other identifiers, but, I can’t do that from here.

It’s imperative to know these Markers, because all but the last are done deals. To fight it, we need to know the tactics that are being use against us, and, it’s all happening at once.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:14 am 24. sol vason:

Movies to watch:

Troy with Brad Pitt. Excellent costumes. Familiar story but they left the Gods out.

Pride and Prejudice with Kiera Knightley. Excellent costumes, accurate sets, follows the original novel. Awesome cinetography.

Any of the films in the Angelique series. Great costumes, decent history.

Rome, the HBO series. Great costumes, accurate sets and captures the tempore et mores. History – high in story less high in fact.

Deadwood, the HBO series. Will be replayed for centuries.

Eric the Viking. Great costumes and sets. They keep the Gods in the movie.

Music: Try Shakira – best on youtube

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:18 am 25. Standing in the Shadows:

The major turn off of contemporary culture is how much contempt the producers of it have for the lives of every day Americans (read, thos of us in flyover country). When an “artist”, and I use that term loosely, has such little respect for his or her audience, as this current crop has, it shows in their work.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:19 am 26. Seppo:

Let’s see, no TV since my ex became my ex three years ago. One movie in the theater this decade. Stopped the Wall Street Journal and The Economist paper subscriptions years ago, but kept WSJ Online. Couldn’t care less about stick and ball games, but still follow auto racing and rallyes online.

But I still listen to a lot of music, and do enjoy the Sirius/XM radio in my car. Still buy CDs when I can, but mostly recordings dating from 1930’s (Carter Family, Delmore Brothers, early blues artists, etc.) to about 1973. The best rock was all from Buddy Holly through 1972, the best bluegrass 1945 to maybe 1985 or so, and contemporary artists just don’t seem to have much useful or interesting to say. I can fill my time with beautiful classical, heartfelt blues and folk, hip jazz, and intelligent rock without much of any recordings from the last two decades or so.

I think we are on the same page, Dr Hanson

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:39 am 27. Gary Ogletree:

When I lived in Canada, CBC Radio was a good source for reviews and tips on quality entertainment. NPR was once like that. Now I find good stuff on TV by accident(like The Unit and Southland) or by browsing Netflix doing searches for the stuff by directors, writers, producers and actors I like. Good stuff is still being made, but it’s harder to find among all the Johnson grass. Instapundit and Jules Crittenden have good lists of books. Would be nice if someone would compile a monthly roster of stuff worth seeing and reading for the fussy somewhere on the net. Or tell me about it if there is one.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:59 am 28. Robert Winkler Burke:

Dr. Hanson, I have done much the same myself… to keep peace in my mind. To wit:

Okay, So It’s Broke
By Robert Winkler Burke
Copyright 10/17/09

Okay, so it’s broke:
Western Christian religion.
Okay, so it’s broke:
Politics corrupting each region.
Okay, so it’s broke:
News-media in one deceiving fusion.
Okay, so it’s broke:
Politically correct education confusion.
Okay, so it’s broke:
People debased by various drugs’ illusion.
Okay, so it’s broke:
What might be, we ask, the solution?

Then, how about:
Western civilization’s enlightenment!
Then, how about:
Constitutional three-part government!
Then, how about:
Abstract wisdom of the ages against problems present!
Then, how about:
Deceptive demagoguery with sword of truth rent!
Then, how about:
Finite issues ameliorated by great minds’ past achievement!
Then, how about:
Admitting by ignoring history we have much to repent!
Then, how about:
Seeing we need not utopian perfection, but fix what’s bent!
Then, how about:
We leave our progeny a world with much less dent!
Then, how about:
Mutual dedication to self-restraint to patch liberty’s tent!
Then, how about:
We do this now, that our seed never ask where good went!
Then, how about:
Humble reverence to each ancient Western Enlightenment hint!
Then, how about:
Ours, the greatest renaissance stint!
Then, how about:
This ethereal love on true ascent!

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:07 am 29. Joe:

Just last night I was watching “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” with my grandson, a movie advertised as a “family-friendly laffer (sic).” And even in this moronic 90 minute bore the Hollywood liberal bias was evident..at the end, Blart’s bi-racial daughter (white-hispanic) says: “and.. she doesn’t need a green card” an obvious reference to her mother’s unexplained absence. Oh, those hateful white people at ICE making such a big deal out of having a visa or other form of legal documention that you’re legally in the U.S. A common story theme in “Crash,” “Babel” and now “Mall Cop.”

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:18 am 30. David K.:

“Reactionary nostalgia”….sifting through the ashes of popular culture to find something firm and enduring. Will my children years from now reach back and grab onto Kanye West as a touchstone of meaning? I doubt it.

Thanks, VDH, for again making concrete my vague notions.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:18 am 31. R. Richard Schweitzer:

The use of the word “culture” depends on the context for what is intended as meaning. Following the context here:

What we have today are the responses to the cravings for constant entertainments, diversions and distractions; for which there is no need for “cultural content” (such as displays of some perception of the varities of human condition through histrionics).

This all seems to correlate with the steadily increasing trends to shed individual responsibility, or to transfer it to a collectivity labeled “society.”

Jaques Barzun noted other elements affecting those correlations 20 years ago in his small but pungent “The Culture We Deserve” (Wesleyan University Press)

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:34 am 32. Frank Miller:

VDH–

As usual, I concur with your sentiment, and share much of your taste (just watched ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA for the umpteenth time–what a tonic!), but I think that you’re unaware of the quiet struggle ongoing in entertainment.

The acting talent is there in abundance, though frequently misdirected, poorly scripted, and dismissed or downright condemned by critics. Given the proper opportunity, I’d put Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Daniel Craig, Gary Sinise, Matt Damon, Samuel Jackson, Harrison Ford and others up against the stars of old. I’d likewise mention two actors in particularly with whom I’ve had the pleasure to work: Gabriel Macht and Gerard Butler. No nasal, spoiled-by-spending-their-lives-sitting-by-the-swimming-pool spoiled-brat conceit there.

“He is the hero; he is everything,” wrote Raymond Chandler. In film, a hero is a construct in the best sense of the word. The heroic actor is, of course, the sine qua non of any such effort. But whatever his talents and inherent dramatic virtue, the heroic actor is hobbled by an anti-heroic script, director, or studio. Women? You probably haven’t heard of Carla Gugino, but should her talent be unleashed, she’d give Bettte Davis a run for her money. Take a good look at Hilary Swank in MILLION DOLLAR BABY, and see what she can do–if allowed.

Many in Hollywood still whine about “The McCarthy Era,” which is ironic, given that McCarthy lost and the Left won. So the pervading atmosphere is at direct odds with any attempt at heroic drama. In response, a fast-growing group called FRIENDS OF ABE has taken shape in hope of reclaiming heroism–and patriotism–to the screen. Then next time we’re both in LA, I’d love to take you to one of their lunches or dinners. I think you’d find it encouraging, if not inspiring.

FM
FM

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:36 am 33. gpc31:

There was a time in the mid ’80s when I would drive 30 miles in rural Alabama to get the Sunday NYT. The news and analysis seemed trustworthy, indispensable, and coherent. I would eagerly devour the book review. Now The Times is not worth browsing from my laptop.

I try to think hard about decision-making and history, with special emphasis on certain eras: The Peloponnesian War (thank you VDH), the decline of the Roman Republic, the fall of the Roman Empire, and magnificently crowded 16th century. Reading the ancients is like hearing a basso profundo in the score of current events.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:40 am 34. mart:

VDH – did you ever read George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman series? Wonderful historical comedy adventures based on an encyclopedic knowledge of the momentous 19th century.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:47 am 35. Ron Kean:

Confession is good for the soul.

I’m getting punch drunk from the left. My US Representative wrote me back saying that the health care bill will save us money. He’ll vote for it and I’ll vote for ANYBODY else but him.

I’ve seen maybe 3 movies at the theater this year. I like Netflix. Just saw ‘Charade’. George Kennedy is my favorite character actor. I discovered Greta Garbo-a silent movie-she seduced 2 best friends. Unbelievably beautiful woman. I went through a Judy Garland stage recently. I had only seen OZ before. So…somebody’s going to call me gay. They already call me a racist. To those who do, f&%$ #$%.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch is getting to be as small as the bulk mail coupon papers that they send from the grocery store.

I just bought Todd Rundgren’s ‘Something Anything’ CD. I wore out the record in the early 70’s. Before that, ‘Memory Almost Full’ last year by McCartney-his latest and a great one.

I hope people stay enthused by the NFL. I sell NFL products. But I like watching ‘Jerry McGuire’, ‘Any Given Sunday’, and ‘MASH’ better.

I almost sold my TV.

I wish more people would use real names here. I don’t think anybody’s going to get you. I also wish more people would get the boot here like Charles does at LGF. Some here are like little girls who hit their big brothers and run just to get attention. It’s a waste of time to stumble upon them. They can easily exercise their freedom of speech in like company somewhere else.

Who would ever sign up for a course at a university just to contradict or insult the professor and make fellow students roll their eyes out of frustration?

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:50 am 36. Robert Curry:

Dear Prof. Hanson,
Thanks for sharing your confessions.

It is only too clear that Hollywood has fallen out of love with America, and so has the NYTimes.

An American who travels, say, to Greece has to be prepared for the ritual anti-Americanism that must be endured. It is, like jet-lag, part of the cost of visiting the Acropolis–and it is of course only temporary. But to have to endure it day in and day out here in America, in American newspapers, American films, American television finally gets to be too much…
…and then one finds that one has to go back to the 50’s to find popular culture that celebrates America.

The American who loves his country is, must be, alienated from American popular culture in the Obama era.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:06 am 37. Dred Scott:

Not that you read these comments either, but bring yourself to sell the raisin farm and move to the Northeast California where the life you longingly describe is as it was.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:16 am 38. CGHill:

“Liberty is traditional and conservative; it remembers its legends and its heroes. But tyranny is always young and seemingly innocent, and asks us to forget the past.” — G. K. Chesterton.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:24 am 39. Gylippus:

One of the most difficult stages of my life was my dawning post 9/11 awareness that many of my cultural heroes were in fact promoting (not so) subtle anti-western, anti-American views. Having grown-up in the post-modern cultural bubble, I could not see that in my youth.

Fortunately there are still Homer and Thucydides, Shakespeare and Tennyson, Bruegel and Da Vinci, Beethoven and Bach, Fritz Lang and Kurosawa (etc.) all of whose work is immortal

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:33 am 40. Pajamas Media » Confessions of a Cultural Dropout:

[...] Read the entire article here. [...]

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:04 am 41. Delia:

“Ironman” was a good movie.

The sequel will probably suck eggs but I’ll be a sucker and probably watch it just like I watched the sucky sequels to “THE MATRIX”.

When all else fails I create fonts and listen to music.

I plan on selling my fonts soon.

God willing!

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:07 am 42. Sherab Zangpo:

Mozart.
Saint Anselm.

As you can see I am multiculturalist.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

PS I am all for going back to the old PJM in Latin.

PPS Oh, we didn’t have PJM in Latin ? well, it’s time we think about it !

PPPS I would accept Hebrew, Chinese, Tibetan, Classical Greek…

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:18 am 43. Moho:

LOL. Well, if you’re representative of the rest of these boobs, then its not really a surprise. Here’s the thing:

The front-page stories are thinly disguised op-eds and poorly written and sourced, and the op-eds are not disguised first-person rants by Dowd, Krugman, Herbert, Rich, etc. largely embarrassing confessions from a group of well-off, well-connected, status-obsessed elites lecturing the nation outside New York and Los Angeles on its various sorts of illiberality.

But can you prove it? Obviously, you can’t, because you would have had at least one example. Its quite possible that the NYT is written by tree-house full of socialists. All the more reason to read it, to make sense of it, to know where the paper of record is coming from, and thus be able to counter the propaganda you see there. Empirically, if you’ve stopped reading the NYT, then you’re not qualified to say anything about it today. Do you understand the logic inhernet in your statements? That’s right, there is none. Perfect for your readership.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:20 am 44. Robert Curry:

Dear Gylippus,

I very much appreciate your posting. Good for you that 9/11 was a wake-up call for you.

And I too love the Brueghels, the Bachs and Kurosawa…but do you notice that no American appears on your list of immortals? Are there none? Or perhaps could this be evidence of that (not so) subtle process you mention? Just a friendly question.

All the best

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:25 am 45. Rob De Witt:

Dr. Hanson, we apparently live in the same world. You have expressed in a nutshell every screed I have indulged in the last 40 years.

Bravo.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:26 am 46. gail m:

My husband and I feel exactly the same. The encouraging thing is that our 40ish sons also feel like this. I wonder how many other commentators’ children are the same. I imagine many.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:33 am 47. Jack in Silver Spring:

Dr. Hanson: My sentiments exactly. The only exception was the TV show Battlestar Galactica until its third season began when it went off the rails. You be surprised how much time is freed up for serious reading when not watching TV with its leftist orientation, not reading newspapers with their leftist orientations, not going to movies with their leftist orientations, etc.

BTW There is a lot more straight news in the opinions of PJM, Commentary Contentions, NRO & the Weekly Standard than in the so-called of the op-ed pieces pretending to be news that appear on the front pages of the MSM.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:51 am 48. 11B40:

Greetings:

The recent government-directed conversion from analog to digital TV transmission had an unintended consequence on my limited viewing habits.

I live a couple of small cities south of the Peoples’ Republic of San Francisco Bay. My over the air TV reception was limited by the topography to the so-called UHF stations. When the conversion finally became a reality, I lost most of the UHF stations but began receiving KTSF, a local Asian-oriented VHF station. It broadcasts two sub-channels MBC and KBS which feature Korean language programming, a lot of which, thankfully, has English subtitling.

I quickly became an almost regular viewer. I particularly enjoy the serialized historical dramas, with their large doses of slicey-dicey and Dragon Ladies. I was surprised by the centrality of the womenfolk in the different series. The more modern day series seem to present a culture that visibly and consistently supports the traditional family structure, especially respect for elders and those in authority.

Koreans apparently also enjoy their game shows and comedies. A couple of the game shows involve students as contestants. I was surprised by the number of times students say that they will do their best in their studies and the respect that they show their parents and teachers. The comedies were a revelation to me in that my limited personal experience with Asian peoples hasn’t involved their enjoying themselves clowning around. It seems to me that once they get started, they really enjoy taking off the behavioral handcuffs of their public behavior.

In many ways, I find the Korean broadcasts to be similar to our TV programming in the ’50s and ’60s. There is a right and a wrong, a good and a bad. It’s a welcome breath of freshened air.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:59 am 49. Sgt. Mom:

I’ve been withdrawing from popular culture too, as far as music and first-run movies go … and magazines. I used to keep track of popular music – I had to, as a military dee-jay overseas. But no more; too many of them are crass, crude and talentless. Back to the classical station for me. Now I get my news from the internet – I used to read a lot of magazines, and the local newspaper, and listen to NPR a lot … and now I hardly bother with any of them. Used to love the movies, but now I don’t bother, unless I get a freebie DVD to review. About the only movie I watched lately was “The Proposal.” Why should I fork over $10 at the multiplex to be lectured, have my intelligence and my values insulted, or to be bored senseless? I also used to love listening to “Prairie Home Companion”, but not in the last two years, ever since Garrison Keillor became so bitter and deranged.
I went all the way back to the 19th century, to write about the American frontier, to work out for myself what made the US such a special place, this breathtaking experiment in being a constitutional republic, a place where people could come and make themselves into what they wanted to be, not what those in authority felt they ought to be, and to sort out their lives for themselves.
Contemporary popular culture, or at least that aspect of it on the covers of the magazines at the supermarket checkout has nothing to say to me that I am interested in, and I am not the least surprised to find that others share this variety of “going Galt.”

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:59 am 50. theotherone:

Right there with you, Prof. Hanson. I find the movies, books, music, etc., etc. that I look to for entertainment tend to be older than what’s out there now. Haven’t been in the theaters for a feature film since…the first Narnia movie. And even then, on average I see a movie in a theater every three years. About the only series I watch on tv is Mythbusters, and that’s not fiction, just science with a twist. Modern music and I parted company when rap and hip hop took over and degraded women with their lyrics and imagery. I’m not sure it’s my age; I’ve found entertainment from other countries more interesting than what the U.S. offers (Japan for instance). It’s just that present day U.S. culture seems so crass these days. If there’s a lower common denominator, they go for it. Ran across a kid’s cartoon the other day on CN where a superpowered kid used “flaming farts” to destroy the enemy. I don’t remember Warner Brother’s Looney Tunes in their heyday feeling like they had to scrape that bottom barrel to get a laugh. Only Pixar seems to deliver quality in the animation field these days–because they do it with class. Sadly lacking in today’s culture.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:59 am 51. Morgan:

Thank you Dr. Hanson, for expressing what has been on my mind for quite some time, albeit in a much more articulate and informed way. I’ve largely dropped out of following current pop-culture as well; I have found, however, both the cable series “The Wire” and the miniseries “John Adams” to be outstanding.

You may be interested in a new series on Big Hollywood called “For Conservative Movie Lovers” that started just this week. I’ll include the URL for the introduction. Every weekly entry will focus on a film, beginning with “They Were Expendable” by John Ford.

I may not follow television, but one thing I’m sure not to miss is your blog. Thanks again –

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2009/10/16/introducing-for-conservative-movie-lovers/#more-245410

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:02 pm 52. Poor Citizen:

They were handing out awards on one of those award programs and every winner’s name they called out…I had never even heard of.. and all the programs my son talks about I have not seen..

Man, I hate getting older. Don’t you?

Now where is that oldies station?…doowap doowap doowap..

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:10 pm 53. Ron:

It’s been a long process for me. I stopped following music when disco was invented. The last good movie I saw in a theater was Eastwood’s “Unforgiven”. I gave away my TV 4 years ago. There have been many great writers through the ages. The classics are time better spent.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:26 pm 54. Dave the Kapampangan:

Well, if you think the movies are bad, don’t even consider watching the inane commercials that they play before the movie starts. They are COMPLETELY IDIOTIC, and must only appeal to humans with the intelligence and attention span of orangutans.

But maybe American standards have devolved. For example, my third grade kid just learned fractions, and according to his quarterly test scores, he scored as well as the average American HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE nationally in math.

Speaking of standards, somehow I can’t even imagine DiCaprio, Clooney, Affleck, or Pitt having the vocal chords or the gonads to snarl, “Get your stinking paws off me, you damn, dirty apes!” Are we that far removed from old time radio voices, that actors no longer have decent, Shakespearean voices and are hired solely for their looks or connections?

Yes, music these days is far too derivative. My high-school-teaching friend often reminds kids, “I heard that riff or that song the first time it came out– in the seventies.”

I don’t watch satellite or cable TV. It’s pathetic. I simply pick and choose the shows I like and watch them when I like on the Internet, if I’m interested at all. Also, the media is reduced to 2-second sound bytes and anti-Western screeds by hypocritical Al Gore/ David Letterman types, so I read what I like from whom I like rather than get it force fed by the MSM.

And I drive a Honda.

So what I’m basically saying is that I think the big American companies (education, cars, TV, music, federal and state government) completely take the customer for granted and try to force feed us crappola just to stock their ridiculously fat pension plans — that they get at the expense of the hardworking, enslaved customer whom they think they can continue bilking for easy money.

The big disconnect is that the average consumer is totally refusing to buy this crappola, so the government is now trying a new alternative– taxing the heck out of the consumer through thinly disguised methods (cap and trade, printing money, issuing bonds, et cetera) and giving the money to the exact same previous recipients — big media, car companies, and the rest of the preachy purveyors of low quality.

But the consumer doesn’t have to buy it. Just vote with your wallet, and let the too-big-to-fail, too-arrogant-to-pay-attention-to-the-customer enterprises sink.

Guess I’m just sick of the whole force feeding experience.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:27 pm 55. Patrick Of Atlantis:

You are not alone.
I was watching a movie called ‘Blood Diamond’ the other night. The “Bang! Bang!s and Ratatattattattattatttattattatt!s in lieu of dialogue made it impossible to watch it to the end.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:34 pm 56. Bilgeman:

VDH:
“I don’t particularly like the idea that I want little to do with contemporary culture. But I feel it nonetheless—and sense many of you do as well.”

Alienation is a pas de deux, Professor.

You’re being “unmarketed” by the commercial forces that drive what passes for culture.

As a reaction to it, you take a good look around and say to yourself:

“Screw ‘em…most of this is trash!”

It’s inevitable as we age that this happens, although I think we do it a little faster and more brutally than we need to.

Eventually, you’ll end up in the lonely years in the retirement/nursery home where you, (also inevitably), join the “WhenWe Tribe”.

It is for this reason that I’ve long counselled young male pollywog mariners to forsake the sea and seek work as porno actors.

One day they’ll be sitting around in such a place listening o a bunch of other geezers brag on their careers, and when their turn comes, they can pop in the DVD and hit the “Play” button.

They won’t make much money doing that either, but at least they’ll have a body of work to be proud of in their sunset years.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:36 pm 57. David:

My wife tried to write a screen play. She had a Hollywood type read it and they could not understand that the oil company in her plot was actually one of the good guys. The whole thought process that a major corporation could help a community was foreign to their thought process. The problem is that the people who have a monopoly on the communication and enterainment industry all think the same, which is 180 degress different from the average American.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:38 pm 58. Bret:

I don’t think of most of those things as popular culture so much anymore. Blogs, facebook, twitter, last.fm are where popular culture is at. Sure, the young still watch silly movies and have their “pop” idols, but in music, what amazes me most is that I hear my children playing Beatles and other music that’s actually a little old for my taste!

The young (and old, for that matter) are doing this out of reach of government, out of reach of the main-stream media, and out of reach of all authority and control. They are truly free in thought and speech. I see them retreating into virtual realities in the next couple of decades where they are truly free in all of their experiences.

VDH of all people should know this since he’s a leader in the alternative media.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:39 pm 59. Roughcoat:

Re: “… many Athenians did it in the early 4th century BC and Romans by the late 3rd AD….”

Fascinating. Where can I find out about 4th Century BC Athenians and 3rd Century AD Romans withdrawing from public culture? Can someone provide titles, sources?

Thanks.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:40 pm 60. Now and Then:

35. Ron Kean:
“I almost sold my TV.”

Yep. There it is.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:46 pm 61. Richard:

I hear you, VDH. Add to the list as of this week, the NFL. Not gonna go to any games, not going to watch it on TV. They can all go fly a kite.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:51 pm 62. Gringo:

I have similarly dropped out of contemporary culture, though I am an avid consumer of Internet-filtered current events and commentary. I stopped watching TV newscasts 30+ years ago, with the exception of occasional views of McNeil Lehrer. The ads and the condescending tone of the MSM got to me; I found McNeil-Lehrer to be more neutral than the networks. I prefer reading on the Internet to watching on TV.I stopped NPR when I tired of the sneering condescending tone towards Republicans- I was an Independent at the time.

I don’t need radio for music, as I have 700+ CDs, most purchased @ $2/CD in box sets. Mostly jazz and classical. I learned what a treasure Louis Armstrong is.

I haven’t been to a movie theater in 7 years. Much cheaper by DVD, such as some box sets of 50 movies for $10-20.

I never had cable, and confined my viewing to occasional PBS and sports. Had trouble with resetting my TV and remote for the new TV system, and haven’t considered the loss of TV enough motivation to spend the time to reset the remote.

Newspapers and magazines? Maybe $10/ year, if that. Internet suffices.

One comment on movies. Fifteen years ago I bought a universal pass for a film festival, and saw 20-30 movies that week. I was very impressed with the quality of the independent producers, who were producing as good or better stories than Hollywood at less than 10% of the Hollywood budget. The only advantage Hollywood had over them was in special effects. These days, with the advances in imaging software, that advantage is considerably reduced.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:51 pm 63. Jill Mayfield:

Excellent.

One area you missed is the children entertainment. We forbid our kids to watch any of the current crop of cartoons. We have hours of Looney Tunes, Scooby Doo (no Scooby Pup), Pink Panther, Flintstones, and Tom & Jerry to keep them happy. Today’s cartoons teach poor manner and liberal ideology. No thanks.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:52 pm 64. clear mind:

Ah, yes, Bob Seeger is in the CD along with Buffet, Browne and Garth Brooks. And when my Marine son was in Haditha Iraq and the duty NCO at the base camp, he’d put Seeger on the PA system and get a “thumbs-up” from the base commander. The Iraqi soldiers operating out of the same base camp would ask him “what do you do in the back seat of a ‘60 Chevy?” and my son would laugh and explain that “pop culture” to them.

The message? Even our youth struggle with the inanity of what’s now available to listen to.

Ho, Ho, Ho… NPR and PR are the sleeping pills of the liberals.

I’ll wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving, as the rate culture is collapsing, that holiday may be banned by the time we get to the end of November. And, oh, Happy-End-of-the-Calendar-Year-Winter-Holiday and, please, destroy all of those trinkets of celebration!

And Commissioner Goodell just killed the NFL!

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:53 pm 65. Roughcoat:

This is Hanson’s most depressing column in the past year. Do you see why?

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:57 pm 66. wl25:

Always good to see Frank Miller and Victor Davis Hanson discussing a topic in the same venue.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:58 pm 67. Sara (Pal2Pal:

The last movie I went to see is “Chicago,” before that I have to go all the way back to “Dances with Wolves.” I can’t remember when I bought a CD or DVD. As for Network TV shows, the only ones worth watching, IMHO, are Donald Bellisario (JAG, NCIS, Magnum) shows where men are men, not angst-ridden wooses. Network news is a joke, most cable news is also a joke.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:59 pm 68. Sebastian Shaw:

I dropped out of the American culture since I was a teenager; I never followed the crowd. I did my own thing. I did the same thing in college. I still do it now.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:02 pm 69. Gary:

Thank God … I am not alone. I thought it was me.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:05 pm 70. Benjamin Rush:

Reading your comments, VDH, was like looking into the mirror of my soul. Most of the points you articulated have been percolating inside my weary spirit for some years. What more defined an American male of my generation (the one that went boom) than a love of sports, movies, TV, books, and a profound trust in our national leader?. I am a child of Eisenhower who has lost his way. The current cultural zeitgeist has left me on the outside looking in on those things I once most cherished. It is for me a profoundly sad situation.

I, like you, used to go to the movies 2 or 3 times a week. Now I go 2 or 3 times a year. Like many Boomers I was raised on the great Hollywood films of the 30’s and 40’s that predominated on TV screens of the 50’s. I should have noticed in the 70’s when westerns started to disappear from the silver screen that something was going terribly wrong.

As you pointed out, the bad guys became the multi-national corporation, the CIA, the US military, the Republican Party, rich white guys in general, and finally the POTUS. How bad was it? Consider these plot points in some popular action films from the 80’s onward. In “The Rock” a large group of former American soldiers must be prevented from exterminating San Francisco with poison gas in order to force the government to pay them overdue medical and retirement benefits. In “Die Hard II,” a company of Green Berets is perfectly willing to kill several hundred Chicagoans to make enough money to live in the jungles of Paraguay for the rest of their lives. In “Blue Thunder” the CIA was going to provoke a race riot in Los Angles so they could test out their new super-attack Helicopter’s ability to kill hundreds of innocent poor people. And these were non-politically motivated actions films. Then came two dozen anti-Iraq War films that featured murderous G.I. Joes driven insane by the guilt of participating in the Bush administration’s evil imperialism. At last glance, those films made collectively between them about $4.95. Hollywood is not deterred, however. Oh, yes, there are more on the way. The mega-budgeted “The Green Zone” arrives early next year.

In my despair, I turned to the Boob Tube for wisdom and truth. What has TV taught me? Well, “Law and Order” reminded me week after week that most crimes in New York City are committed by wealthy white people who very often are driven to their crimes by Republican greed, racism, homophobic bigotry, and indiscriminate Botox injections.

And what of the news media? There was a time when Huntley-Brinkley were my Gods. I believed as holy writ everything I saw and heard on TV news. Then after many disheartening years of decline I watched Dan Rather put out a smear job on a sitting president with that bogus typewritten memo that a 12-year old could have seen was a fake. Now CNN talking heads post and rely on unsourced anonymous quotes to smear commentators with whom they don’t agree with ideologically. Perhaps I had put to much faith in Edward R. Murrow.

It’s been a long fall from grace for most of the things I use to value in my life. So now, I don’t go out much. Of course, I can always count on Turner Classic Movies. Right? So I switch it on and there is Robert Osbourne and Alec Baldwin discussing the evils of McCarthyism as part of their introduction of “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.” What can I say? Good night and good luck.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:06 pm 71. judy nyc:

what culture is that? thanks to no schooling of the usual kind, where one learns something besides fake history, debates issues with depth and understanding, and contributes their voice to a reasoned, educated society we have just slop pouring into the ears of the dumb, dumber and dumbest. we do, however, have the proper president in charge of nothing at all.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:10 pm 72. P. Ami:

Sure, their politics suck but so did the politics of many musicians who are without question great. If your arguing quality of musicianship, tunesmithery or the ability to entertain, how about blaming the corporate culture that has no courage when it comes to promoting good art. Even with that culture in place, you still can easily find Iron and Wine, Andrew Bird, Wilco, Weezer, the Roots and plenty more musicians who are current and excellent.

Films have gotten too expensive for their own good but pay cable TV is where story telling on an epic, grand and meaningful level is being told. The Wire and the Sopranos match up against any film ever made and one could argue that the depth in which the story could be explored in the 13 hours a season they had available permitted exploration you find only in novels.

Baseball is okay. I can’t get into football because I don’t enjoy the sport. The basketball being played now is being played by folk with every bit the number of character flaws as they had in the 80’s. We just have a 24 hour news cycle with half a dozen sports channels pushing the same memes. So, we get to see the character flaws in HD. The basketball played by people like Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Pau Gasol, Steve Nash, Brandon Roy and a dozen other creative, well trained, highly driven, and constantly dissected players is at least at the level as that which was played in the 80’s. I would put this season’s Lakers, Celtics and possibly the Portland team up against the great teams of the 80’s and I think you’d be surprised at the results. Guys like Kevin Durant, Anthony Randolph, Derrik Rose, Rajon Rondo, Blake Griffin, and a few others, are all great talents and as a good a person as anyone should expect from someone who makes a living entertaining people.

I think part of the spirit of this thread is contained in Ecclesiastes. We are all getting older and sometimes the distance we have from our youth makes it difficult to recall all the inane art we grew up with. “How much is that doggie in the window”? The James Bond movies of the past were every bit as formulaic as those today. So, in the older days we had “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”. For every one of those there were 2 dozen formulaic and poorly crafted Westerns. Even if “Inglorious Basterds” is a bit bloody for some of us, it’s great story telling, great acting, excellent cinematography, top notch scripting and the philosophic ideas it excites are unique. What of Brad Pitt’s character in that film do any of us have a problem with?

I am sure there are a few years here and there where the quality of the popular music, popular films, popular TV, and popular novels are higher then others. Then the formulaic takes over. It has been this way always. To everything turn, turn, turn.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:11 pm 73. Cornhead:

What about Meryl Streep?

“Julie & Julia” was good.

I knew we had a real cultural problem when MLB decided it didn’t have the audience to allow day games to compete against the NFL on Sundays.

College basketball, in person, can be fun. The players are not all giants and the games only take two hours. No instant replays on the officials’ call either.

Creighton will play Nebraska in the Final Four this year and thereby shock the entire world.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:11 pm 74. WLindsayWheeler:

I too have dropped out. Stopped watching TV about year ago. Couldn’t stomach the decadence. I don’t go to movies, and stopped participating in American life. Everything is a lie. I’m an armchair classicist and a student and admirer of the Doric Greeks who created in their culture Kaloskagathos. What I see around me—is nothing but barbarians. The West is totally hopeless with Europe becoming Muslim. I am surrounded by idiots and morons.
With my Study of Sparta and the real meaning of a republic, I have since gotten rid of anything dealing with America since it is all a Masonic Kabbalistic lie. After knowing the Truth, everything in America is just nonsense. I have withdrawn from society. I cannot stomach anything going on in today’s world.
I despaired of ever watching any good entertainment until I stumbled upon Korean Drama such as “Emperor of the Sea” and “Jumong”. I am thoroughly impressed with Korean Drama. They have values, Asian values, but values that the West has totally forgotten.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:11 pm 75. cbunix23:

Have you seen “Silverado” ? It was made in 1985, and is similar to some of the classic Westerns you like.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:19 pm 76. Inrptrn:

Professor Hanson,

This phenomenon is not limited to those who are old enough to remember a time when Americans still celebrated being Americans. When the value of our leading culture was unspoken but undeniable, of which it is now quite the opposite. I’m 25 and going on my second year as a drop-out. I have all the same feelings and I’m continually surprised at what passes for ‘cultural enrichment’ in our society. That surprise is quickly wearing off.

In today’s America, you can take the culture out of the establishment, but you can’t take the establishment out of the (anti)culture.
And we, as a people, are on the wrong side of that inertia.

I must echo #36: Robert Curry, that the American who loves his country must be alienated from popular culture in this era: and #16: JamesA in preserving what we can for better times to come. When your culture seeks to destroy itself, turn to the old knowledge. There we can still find some rest is this desolate place. And perhaps that ability is the greatest contribution that historical study and preservation has made. In their being there when we need them, and we need them now.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:19 pm 77. Oblio:

Can anyone doubt that Dr. Hanson’s example should be emulated and encouraged? I must suppose that this “withdrawal” from the culture is closely related to Dr. Hanson’s astonishing productivity. And therein lies the key: that classical virtus and mens sana are the keys to a more productive and sustainable way of living.

I think that we must be approaching a break in the culture that will be marked by the emergence of new and astonishing acts of creativity, and the end of the cultural ancien regime.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:21 pm 78. Kipling:

I am reminded of the words spoiken by Jeremiah amongst the decaying culture of his day: “Stand at the crossroads and look, ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” (6:16)

Post-modern man, rather than having evolved, has actually devolved and is a lesser man than is ancestors. We revere the past, not because it is past, but because it held value and substance. Our only hope is to return to the ancient ways and flee the cultural wasteland of the 21st century.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:24 pm 79. davidingeorgia:

Amen, Mr. Hanson, amen. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think that I was born at least 2 or 3 decades later than I should have been. Virtually nothing that passes for pop culture these days interests me in the least, and much of it nauseates and disgusts me. And some days, watching the “elite” of both parties do their level best to make our country worse and themselves richer and more powerful, I see no hope of change coming.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:24 pm 80. Listen up:

I seldom find a new movie worth my time. Current music stinks. The news media in large part is controlled by the left and their socialized agenda, has been for years. Education is dumb down for the dumb. There is no discipline, no respect, no common politeness. Language is now all gutter filth. Crime is overlooked if it is committed by a minority or a politician. Humor is not funny. People of faith are ridiculed in main stream media and so called entertainment. Corruption in government is the norm. Everyone is a victim. Violent crime is rampant. All whites are racist. You cannot fly the flag, nor can you discipline your child or pray at events outside the church. The military who made this country free are not allowed memorials, yet leftist pot smokers can burn the flag and speak to graduating classes at schools about how much they hate America and George Bush. Have I dropped out of modern culture…you betcha! I am a bitter clinger in Carolina

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:27 pm 81. Mike2:

Won’t try to comment on the other aspects of our post modern culture but there is one thriving type of music that is still down home and high energy and that is Bluegrass music. Not modern country music but traditional Bluegrass music. There are festivals and clubs all over and the musicianship amongst the pros is some of the best. Just thought I’d add a positive note on what is a depressing subject.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:35 pm 82. Bob Levin:

Yep, Victor. Same boat. I’m not going to get into grand pronouncements about civilization, but I’ll add three factors that are part of our cultural canvass that lead to what you are really describing, an astounding lack of quality.

One, there is the prevalent narcissism about which Christopher Lasch wrote–this has a devastating affect on comedy, that no one wants to play the straight man, which is like trying to make bread without flour. It also breaks down the quality of drama, because the narcissist can’t really get to grand themes, meaning that there can’t be a hero of the variety of Philip Marlowe, or Jimmy Stewart in an Anthony Mann western. Rituals disappear, no possibility of John Ford, who could only show deep emotion through ritual. And there’s no possibility of expressing and honest, deep emotion–precisely because of the lack of respect for ritual.

Here’s a paradox. As much as the Sixties spoke of individual expression, it was pretty much the death of the individual, as mass produced and formulaic culture seemed to take root everywhere. That is, the idea of honing a skill died. Musicians, writers, everyone producing culture no longer looked towards becoming excellent–because success could come so quickly. Any kid could pick up a guitar and in a year there was the possibility of becoming known as a great musician. Jazz sounds the same, rock sounds the same, Hollywood produces the same film (one can argue that Hollywood always did that–but that’s not quite true as they were figuring out what the formula is initially.) Put another way, the Sixties is when that formula was completed.

The third factor is this prevalent nihilism, that is, you can’t win, good can’t triumph over evil, there is no meaning, there is no truth, no real good, no real evil. The news, then, is the same every day, because it’s a production formula. Literature, the story begins, ends, the sentences may be lovely, but in the book, that’s all there is, the lovely sentences.

I understand I’m painting with a broad brush, but the fact remains that for some reason, modern culture doesn’t have the richness and depth of a culture only a few generations past. And to put it simply–it’s because the contemporary productions just aren’t as good, overall.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:37 pm 83. Kdr:

…Ditto…

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:45 pm 84. David S:

Living in a bunker. So sad. You can come out now, VDH. Stop and smell the roses.

Peace.

DS

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:45 pm 85. Slveryder:

Well, I’m still in my mid-20’s and I’m already halfway to cultural abstention.

I quit TV when Walker: Texas Ranger ended and haven’t read a newspaper in about 3 years. Why should I bother when WSJ is online, and I can access any paper in the world online? The only magazines I like are the fun science magazine (i.e. Popular mechanics) that usually stay out of global warming trash & always talk up the cool new military toys.

Music is tough–I’m a country freak and really there’s a lot of good music (not rap or R&B) but it’s not what gets playtime on the radio. I also tend to like anything the counter-cultural elitists sneer at as consumer driven. That said, if those blasted singers don’t learn to keep their mouths SHUT off-stage, I’m going to end up blacklisting a lot of them!

As to sports, does PBR rodeo and wrestling count? I quit buying the spiel about basketball being real vs. Wrestling being make-believe about the time I watched Dennis Rodman beat our team by faking falls.

Movies are still fun though. There are still enough fun ones and good actors who are also good people that I enjoy DVDs. Theaters take a lot more enthusiasm than I can usually muster though. However, Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr & Jude Law on Christmas? I’ll be there.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:49 pm 86. David Roberts:

Dear VDH

I think you make a mistake in your cultural seclusion.

1) There is great wok being produced amidst the mediocrity. The Wire on HBO, any great sporting event (the players are better today), a slew of novelists, including Roth and Michael Chabon and many others.

2) You lose relevance by cutting yourself off; I admire your thoughts and your writing and so do not want anyone to dismiss you as a cave dweller (god or monster).

Best wishes,

David Roberts

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:51 pm 87. Psychobarb:

Testing 1,2,3

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:54 pm 88. Psychobarb:

I also have stopped paying attention to a lot of what passes for popular culture. I am 50 years old, in my mind, a “young” middle ager, and feel some of this turning inward is about getting older; my youth has passed and, naturally, my music was more interesting than what my kids listen to. On the other hand, raising two kids, running a household and managing two careers leaves little time for popular culture.

Though, I see September 2000 as a watershed for me; Barak had just offered the Palestinians the Temple Mount and Arafat refused and started the second Intifada. The ground shifted under my feet and the press, UN, EU lambasted Israel for EVERYTHING. As we now know, doctored footage was used against Israel. It wasn’t much longer until 911 and by then I was blogging CONSTANTLY. I simply could not trust my local big city paper to even, make sense, let alone be accurate.

From there everything has looked different; as if a veil has been lifted from my eyes. Was news coverage always this slanted and against anything conservative, or does it seem slanted because I am not a liberal anymore? It’s hard to tell.

Popular culture also looks overly slick and shallow, was it always this way? Who was it who said, “If you are not a liberal in your youth you have no heart and if you are not a conservative when older you have no brain.”

Churchill?

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:03 pm 89. tired:

The decades-long obsession with youth in our culture is bearing some deplorable fruits. In order to appeal to a shrinking base of knowledge, each successive generation of entertainer lowers the bar and guarantees further decline. With fewer sacred cows to gore, irreverent humor and provocation in culture is becoming less interesting.

Maybe looking to the past for substance is a sign of a cyclical swing for the better in our culture? Or is it just hunkering down in the intellectual bunker to avoid the culture wars?

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:03 pm 90. vharlow:

We are on the same page! Must be the same age! I’m so glad you wrote this. I thought there was something wrong with me.

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:11 pm 91. sconna:

I have long dropped out of pop culture and, watching current events, there are many times I wish I could boycott it all over again, but can’t since I already quit reading/watching years ago. That said, when your expectations hit bottom, there are some gems out there. Oddly enough, it is next to impossible to find good modern fiction set in a contemporary, real setting – you have to go into the genres of science fiction, fantasy and children’s to find inspiring stories. The animated movie Up was really good and worth seeing. George RR Martin has written a fantasy series very worth reading. It’s set in an exotic world, in an era similar to medieval europe, with some magic. The magical elements take a back seat to the story – he deals with some pretty heavy philosophy and the story is entirely engrossing. He develops great conflict. Try the TV series Glee for a real treat. The performers in the series truly have talent – it’s a treat.

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:17 pm 92. Qatmom:

I no longer recognize the culture around me as it manifests itself on tv or in newspapers, and I largely reject it in favor of older material [even ordinary tv series from the 1960s are astonishingly grammatical and literate when looked at 40 years later].

I don’t miss the sleaze and trash of popular culture. I gave up on baseball a few strikes ago and after watching multimillionaire players handling themselves like disinterested girls during games. The only sport I follow now is horse racing, which is still about winning and utterly non-PC.

Astonishingly, I have found contemporary DVDs full of stories and characters that I can care about–in Chinese costume tv series, in which the heroes are heroic, and righteousness is praised without a snicker. One of the most influential writers in the shaping of this genre is Hong Kong’s Louis Cha, who is still alive and who may be the most published fiction writer on the planet. He says he was influenced by Dumas.

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:34 pm 93. TLM:

VDH:

Gave up watching TV years ago. If I had to watch anything it would be ice hockey. Most of the players have never had a college education, yet they are more articulate than any NFL/NBL/NBAers. They frown upon showboating and during interviews are even (occasionally) a little self-deprecating. Unreal.

Nothing else to add to what has been said, other than to emphasize that for those of us in our 50’s it is our kids who suffer the greater loss. They can’t (re)turn as easily to what was once culture worth viewing.

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:36 pm 94. WapitiJoe:

Thank you, Professor. I couldn’t agree more. Other than repeats of old films made before films required an agenda (gay, green, leftist, anti USA) I have all but given up on Hollywood. I quit consuming celebrity about a decade ago. Almost the same time I quit buying/reading newspapers. Ditto television. In fact, I gave up on almost all “popular” culture about the time I noticed it all seemed aimed at ridiculing or condemning my values. May they all rot until their decayed remains blow away in the wind.

Keep up the good work, Professor. Yours is a voice of light in the darkness.

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:40 pm 95. Tom W H:

Try the original Manchurian Candidate, with Frank Sinatra, Janet Leigh and wickedly superb Angela Lansbury. Who knows who Johnny’s boy is today. Give up the tv altogether for 2 weeks, and you’ll be hooked – PJM, Fox and blissfully………….

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:42 pm 96. Bruce:

Thank you, I thought it was me being a middle-aged curmudgeon. The constant disposable junk has been finally explained.

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:44 pm 97. Tom W H:

don’t forget Ernie Pyle – Home Country is the best….

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:47 pm 98. Richard:

In the 90s I was on a high volume mailing list dedicated to fans of The Who. There was similar discussion then about the paucity of good music coming out at the time, with a few exceptions noted. A thesis was put forth that I still find interesting and have yet to investigate with any depth. The idea was simple: good times produce shitty music and bad times drive the creative muse. In the 90s everyone was flying high on internet booms and an economy that led some observers to declare the end of the business cycle. By the 2000s, we knew that was folly, but society seemed to continue on cruise control as President Bush (43) urged us to return to the shopping mall. The real estate bubble and high unemployment has come, but it doesn’t yet seem to have permeated the mass culture because the media elites that drive the messaging in that culture are dysfunctionally connected to America and the individual.

The main cultural change during this period that couldn’t be ignored is the one I’m typing on: the internet. The internet took the mass aggregated cultural outlets and smashed them all to pieces. Who needs Hollywood when I can make my own independent film and stream it to anyone who wants to see it? Who needs the music industry and their horde of angry lawyers when I can upload my band’s performances to archive.org and use that to drive concert attendance, CD sales and T-shirt sales? (For artists, all the money has always been in the merchandising, not the music.) Who needs the NYT to print my letter when I can write without space constraints or other pernicious editing on my blog?

Instead of one mass market for culture we now have a mass of individual cultural markets. The fracturing of markets is somewhat extreme and to a certain extent a reaction to the incessant aggregation of culture by elites after World War II up to the first Gulf War. Gulf War I in 1990 was the beginning of the end for mass culture; CNN relayed news from the other side of the world in real-time so effectively that even President Bush (41) seemed to rely on it for “intel”. Meanwhile, the internet community — as small as it was then compared to what it is now — was foretelling the future of Iranian protesters using youtube and facebook to get out their message. As the SCUDs were dropping impotently on Israel, live text reports were streaming out of IRC chat channels from Israelis secure in their bunkers.

The web is now trying to figure out how to re-aggregate the disaggregated. But its not clear that the disaggregated want to be aggregated again.

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:50 pm 99. Nash:

I love how the internet affords me the freedom to actually construct my own Sunday Times as it were. I can choose what is my front page headline news by where I choose to read on the internet. I go from link to link or site to site. It is all my choice in all categories. We create our own daily paper. It’s kind of like Progressive Insurance. In fact, why can’t our health insurance be like that?

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:54 pm 100. Bill Pitts:

Dr. Hanson , You are really a great writer. I enjoy so much reading your columns. I especially enjoyed this column for it expressed my sentiments exactly. I have been turned off for some time with the new hollywood movies. I can not stand to watch them. They mock or denigrate all of muy beliefs and values. The same with newspapers and network news. It has been hard for me to explain to friends and family why I do not and will not watch this trash. I think I will print out this column and when the subject comes up just show it to whomever . It will explain my feelings exactly . THANK YOU
Keep up the good work.
Bill Pitts

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:56 pm 101. ajacksonian:

By the time Augustus realized the sorry state of culture about him, due to his life as he lived it, there was no culture that would listen to him. Thus he died trying to bring back any morality that had been lost and would not be recovered ever as it was. The short steps from there to Nero are just that, short steps no longer long leaps as the change was only in degree, not kind. Today those that have reveled in themselves, defied culture because it was cool to do so, and thumbed their noses at the evil, oh so evil, elders now find themselves as elders with no respect given them by the younger generation. As they have sown, so shall they reap.

Soon we will find that the popular culture, such as it is, lush with the indulgence of the flesh and empty of the spirit will breed a generation taught to thumb its nose at those in power who are now banal when not shrill, and always without content and form to their thoughts in a mad quest for power. That will not bring back the culture as it was, that is gone by inattention, by accepting the bland hatred given us day on day, year on year of that culture which created the things that made this life possible. As the navel gazers took ahold of power they forgot the basics of maintenance, upkeep and ensuring that things got repaired to the point where our infrastructure crumbles deeply with century old sewer lines and water mains. Yet not a dime of ’shovel ready’ money goes to such maintenance and replacement, but to cosmetic signs on far off stretches of road far from where the problems moulder.

Handed a great gift the generation that disdained the previous decided that the gift would always be great and need not be cared for. Disdaining wisdom, the search for platitudes and making people do ‘good’ from those in power has not yielded the basic good to sustain that which was given to them.

Still there is a strain in America that sees an honest day’s work is to get an honest day’s pay, and any getting their greedy claws into that before it is rendered need to be questioned. Those that have sustained basic liberty as the over-riding good and that the role of government is to protect it so that we may foster it has not died. This idea, used against tyrants and over-bearing taxmen, is revolutionary. And those who turn from the indulgence of the flesh can smell the sweetness of liberty and grasp it, if they dare. Our freedom is protected by government, not granted nor given by it. It is we who have liberty, it is self-evident, no matter how much the sweet siren’s song of hatred is given to demean one’s fellow man so as to take his liberty from him, that simple truth that our fellow man has liberty gives the light to survival.

I have no fear of my fellow citizens who use liberty to better themselves and, thusly, lift up a load to support society and create the greater good we all agree to.

Those who seek to take from others in the name of the good, I watch most closely for I know a foe when I see one.

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:58 pm 102. Caphoward61:

For me, the end came in a CSI program. Greshom, on being shown a corpse that his assistant identified as “a movie star,” said,”Clark Gable was a movie star.”

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:58 pm 103. Keith:

All the values we were brought up with:

independence, modesty, self control, hard work, self-sacrifice, responsibility–morality itself!–along with respect for science, reason and the values of the enlightenment have been turned on their head.

In their place we have whining about problems (whether actual or imagined) with no sense of the need for real answers. Our problems are due to witches amongst us and the solutions proffered are to hang them.

We have an enormously rich tradition–the intellectually soundest, most enlightened and life-affirming. I will miss it once its gone.

But unlike others, I do have an answer: divide the country. Those who are capable of understanding objective thought and the enlightenment will come together. It will be perhaps the last refuge of reason. The rest will probably devolve into a species we eventually won’t even be able to mate with.

Who’s with me?

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:00 pm 104. seanmahair:

For almost 8 yrs. we didn’t have either cable or dish and our local channels came in only when the moon was full and the month began with K. We have in the last month gotten 150 channels and while the Food Network, HGTV, Science and the History Channel (although why they have to play “JFK-The three shots that changed the world” over and over again day in and day out I have NO idea) we have roughly 146 channels with nothing worth while on.

I do not read the paper or any magazine that pretends to report News. I also do not read any scandal sheets. I don’t listen to most radio stations and never to NPR of any kind. I do listen to some talk radio but mostly I listen to CD and watch DVD’s. The last movie I went to was The Proposal and it will be a long time before I see another movie with Sandra Bullock in it. She’s not that attractive with her clothes on, taking them off didn’t improve things any. I will rent movies for $1.00 because I don’t feel bad when I have to take them back after watching only the first 20 minutes.

I realize that my brain unlike my stomach will not regurgitate filth and have it gone forever, so I am now very careful about what I allow my mind to consume. I am healthier (mentally) and happier than I have ever been. Hollywood and Washington DC could fall into the sea and I would never know the difference as they have absolutely NO impact on my eternal life.

Here’s to being FREE.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:00 pm 105. Thomas_L.....:

I can always find good music to listen to, there’s just so much available. Great stuff that I missed along the way and, still, there’s always a few new gems that meet my high standards. You have to pay attention though or you’ll end up buying Hootie and the Blowfish, Dave Matthews or, sorry Doc, Coldplay.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:01 pm 106. El Gordo:

Mr Hanson, there is nothing wrong with you. You simply have good taste.

It is amazing and a little flattering to me how similar our experiences are. I have also largely tuned out. I use my 50″ tv only to watch old movies. And why not? I understand why one is missing the communal experience of watching shows or sports together (or at least simultaneously). But we must not expect to much in that respect. In all of history, even moderately educated people wouldn´t spend all their time on contemporary works. They studied the masters. What had come before. We have it easier than they. We can access the best of everything – the recorded work of centuries – at the click of a button. So why would you care about Katie Couric?

Life is too short to waste it on trash. I used to care deeply about rock music, movies, tv – and I still do, but we are in a fallow period. At 42 I am hardly an old fart but it would be pathetic if we still felt the need to follow fashion like a teenager. Besides, movies and rock were tougher back then. Todays rockers are whiny wimps. But I digress. I am still lightly plugged into popular culture but that is mainly to remind myself that we are not missing much.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:03 pm 107. Dr. T:

Another Cultural Drop-Out

The last time I watched any TV program was the last episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 2003. I never watched TV news. The last sports events I watched on TV were gymnastics and ice skating about seven years ago. I gave up on news magazines in 1991. I don’t read the NY Times, but I buy its Sunday crossword puzzle collections. I don’t go to movie theaters, because the ‘ambience’ sucks. I do buy a few movie DVDs each year. My favorites are Pixar animations (such as The Incredibles and Wall•E), though I did like The Negotiator and Panic Room.

I read carefully selected Internet sites for news, opinions, and economics. The only site I visit that isn’t produced by one or a few bloggers is Reason.com.

By shunning TV and almost all major media, I eliminate much of the hype, nonsense, and bias in the news. I also avoid the ads (I have ad blockers for my web browser), the slow pace (I can read much faster than news readers can talk.), and the sound-bite style of news presentation. I see no disadvantages to being a cultural drop-out. I don’t need to know about CSI, Wife-Swap, or Degrassi (which are about as culturally uplifting as the pulp detective novels of the 1930s). I’ll leave keeping up with modern media culture to contemporary anthropologists and Hollywood reporters.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:12 pm 108. Allison Allera:

You have to find the sweet comedies. “Napolean Dynamite” is great, made in small town Idaho by a pair of Mormon brothers who make us laugh hard. It shows a great love of people and is hysterical.
A Nova Scotia TV series, “Trailer Park Boys” is bad good fun. Terrible language but surprisingly sweet characters.
As for the rest…let the crazy storm out there howl without us!

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:12 pm 109. tomd:

and i thought i was the only one.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:18 pm 110. glenn:

Welcome aboard.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:23 pm 111. rc:

Wow..you just described me Victor.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:33 pm 112. PM:

Looks like you’ve hit another nerve professor… And the trolls are speechless at this one.

BTW, my TV went off for good in ‘94.

Always looking forward to seeing what’s next on your mind.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:36 pm 113. CatoRenasci:

What currently passes for establishment culture or popular culture bears no almost no relation to the high culture of the West that I was brought up to enjoy and to which I devoted a significant portion of my academic training in intellectual history and political philosophy. New music, even new classical music and jazz, left me cold at least 20 years ago. Contemporary ‘literary’ fiction seems virtually unreadable to me — I couldn’t get into any of the novels my English major daughter recommended. I tried to keep up with the scholarly literature in my fields and could at least skim it through the ’80s, but in the past 20 years, history, philosophy and political philosophy especially have become almost unreadable — unless it’s something by someone who was already middle-aged when I was an undergraduate, such as Jacques Barzun.

It’s curious, having spent much of my youth studying modern European and American history, especially the history of ideas, I have found myself in the past decade turning more and more to ancient history (especially Rome and to a lesser extent Greece) and to the classics.

When I was a student of history, we still read many historians who were writing in the 19th century and before. Now, when my other daughter studied history at a major university – and she took some care to avoid ‘fluff’ and politically correct courses – she read almost nothing more than a decade or so old. And much of it stuff and nonsense.

I worry that even the very books that once defined a solid education in history and philosophy will no longer be widely available outside of the research stacks of major universities. Already, many of the fine, solid works of historical scholarship that were widely available in the 1960s and 1970s — Harper Torchbooks, anyone? or Anchor Books or Vintage or the many others — are long since out of print. They can often be found used, but rarely new anymore.

My wife badgers me about too many books in boxes and hints I should use the library, but so often I find that I have a better library of high quality work in the historical and philosophical areas I’m interested in than our local public library (and, it’s exceptionally well-funded, large, and considered excellent. Yet, so much I would consider essential just isn’t there). So I, I’m surrounded by thousands of books that ought to be widely read and aren’t. And by thousands of CDs of classical, jazz, and popular music of the first 3/4 of the 20th century that seem more and more to be going out of print, and to which fewer and fewer people listen.

I, curmudgeon.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:36 pm 114. Paul M Hupf:

There is little, if anything, worthwhile in today’s newspapers, on TV, radio and in the arts, if that word is even appropriate for what passes today for artistic endeavor. My high school and college years, (I am 87 years of age) under the Jesuit fathers, was devoted to Latin; Greek; Shakespeare; Milton; and many others who excelled in English literature; history, ancient and medieval; logic and epistomology, debating and elocution. They called their curriculum the “ratio studiorum”. My sense is that such studies are hard to find today even in institutions conducted by the Jesuit fathers. Our culture is debased and our country, regrettably, gives good evidence of its debasement.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:40 pm 115. Dave M.:

Dr. Hanson, Do yourself a favor and see Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torion”. It will do you some good.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:42 pm 116. Old Tom:

You are not alone. The entire world has finally slipped through the looking glass, and there is nothing there to see that is worth looking at. I gave up TV 10 years ago. Haven’t been to a movie in longer than that. Music is either a re-hash or just trash. I think there are more out here like you than you may think.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:43 pm 117. digitalis:

I have this discussion with friends and family members several times a year. We have all “dropped out”. I watch tapes of all movies, sitcoms that were really funny, just about every movie the BBC has ever made, read an average of five books every ten days and get most of my news from the internet. The overarching complaint I and many others has is the contemptible assault on our intelligence. Everything is crass, vulgar, in your face, lewd, assinine, and UGLY OUT LOUD. Nevermind the fact that if a plug for marxism can be thrown in completely disconnected or immaterial from the story, it always gets in. The actors and actresses are banal. And forgettable. They all look alike and the men act and look like wussies. And for all this we are being charged more and more every year. No thanks to “contemporary” culture. There was so much more lovliness and here’s a word noone hears anymore WHOLESOMENESS in what was created for our entertainment and enjoyment years ago. It was created for adults. Not elongated adolescents who refuse to grow up.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:04 pm 118. Libertyship46:

Amen to all you said, Victor. God, do I hate his century! I find myself more and more reading history books and I certainly don’t watch network TV anymore. What little TV I do watch is generally FOX news and what little else I watch are old movies on Turner Classic Movies. That’s about it. I have little patience for today’s culture and even less interest in what Hollywood is dishing out these days as “entertainment.” And for the truly brain dead there are always the reality shows, where even common and ordinary everyday people can get on TV and be ridiculed by common and ordinary everyday people. What really kills me is when liberal Hollywood elites today make fun of the strict language and sex censorship they had in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Yep, those films sure weren’t filled with sex or bad language. Yet we managed to get movies like Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Mrs. Miniver, the Wizard of Oz, and To Have and Have Not, to name just a very few. And yet people survived, they managed to come up with sensational movies and great radio programs. As General Patton (no stranger to bad language) once said, “The world grew up. What a shame.”

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:05 pm 119. Anna Herring:

Oh, you must be as old as I am! Somehow, I thought you were younger. But, we’ve had a good life, haven’t we? The big regret, though, is thatthe wonderful life and opportunity that America has had to offer seems to be coming to an end. If we can’t turn it around, our countrymen are giving up the gift handed to them by fortune. One that may not be easily recovered.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:30 pm 120. Ron:

And here I thought my wife and I were two of very few fitting this description – she because she’s finishing a doctorate while maintaining a light patient load, and doesn’t have the time; I because I simply no longer have the patience to read, watch or listen to something I’ve read, watched or heard a hundred times already – now with the added ingredient of being either preached to, ridiculed or vicariously emasculated.

Even the one aspect of pop culture I’d found enjoyably distracting – multiplayer online games, and the communities that coagulate around some of them – has become tedious and, ultimately, degraded by the “enhance-until-broken” mentality espoused by game designers more interested in padding a resume with “innovative” gimmickry than in producing a quality product with (re-)playability and heart.

The upside is that this provides more time for musical pursuits and for reading.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:33 pm 121. turfmonster:

That column described what I have done over the past 20 years.

Goodbye to all that – and I haven’t missed any of them for a femtosecond, either.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:36 pm 122. Ed Ross:

Thanks for the tour of your mind. I, too, consider myself a ‘cultural dropout.’ I no longer watch TV, nor read the print media. I read electronically and as an electic. I haven’t suffered much guilt over that, there are just too many important things to do to waste my time on the drivel that calls itself contemporary – be it news, or art or sport.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:39 pm 123. Steve Campbell:

Yes, Dr.Hansen, you hit the nail right on the head as usual and it was directly on a stud, making for a firm attachmet. I was all into the contemporary culture for much of my life, interested, engaged, loving the music and art, cinematic and otherwise. I was a TV addict, now, can barely watch…although “the Mentalist” is rather engaging. Now, I listen to classical music on a streaming station from Venice, listen to Rush, watch a little soccer from England and a travel show about food…..the rest, who cares?

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:40 pm 124. steveg:

Pop culture has its audience, and it is generally the ages 12 to 40 crowd. At age 40 is when I started tuning out of what would be considered hip at the time. It was 1995 when I stopped watching award shows where smug leftist awarded smug leftist, and the same goes for late-night talk shows.

I went from watching the sitcoms to educational television until they started preaching global warming alarmism ad nauseam.

The american left has turned our culture into a cess-pool, and they seem to be proud of it. If you complain about the lyrics of rap or the thuggishness of todays athelete you are called a racist, so its best just to shut up, and mind your on business.

I do not expect any change in whats left of my life, so make the best of the bizzaro world we all live in.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:44 pm 125. texexpatriate:

I agree, Dr. Hanson. What I did, after a long long vacation from mioies and t.v. that still continues, was begin to write my own novels. There is still a market for novels about strong genuine Americans. I think that market is going to get bigger.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:49 pm 126. Fairbanks99:

I agree with much of the article as well as the posts following. I too do a lot of reading, and have read all of Vince Flynn’s books except his most recent. Joseph Finder and Brad Thor are also outstanding writers; read all their books also.
Most of pop culture is just trash, period. It has a very corrosive influence on our young. However there are some good musical artists out there. I have Sirius and listen mostly to Channel 12 which features current performers. (If they would come out with a Baroque channel I would equally divide my time). My favorite musician today is one who actually loves his country and respects the US military, John Ondrasik, better known as Five For Fighting. He was profoundly affected by 9/11 and his music shows it. His new album, “Slice” was just released last week. Tremendous talent.
Today I finished reading “Glory Denied” by Tom Philpott which is an account of the life of our longest held POW, Colonel Jim Thompson, held captive for almost nine years in Vietnam. Those POW’s recognized the influence of Communism on our culture upon their return home. They had observed it up close and personal in prison, and did not understand how America could embrace it so easily. Little did they know that one day we would elect one President.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:50 pm 127. Anonymous:

I meant to spell that movies.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:50 pm 128. devil:

I have read all the comments written so far here.

It seems to me a few things should be noted:

- there’s a significant difference between those who are younger and dropping out versus the older generations.

- integrity and vision seem to be what are missing very often these days

- the dark ages began when bush took office. the culture-monks withdrawing to the underground monastery to preserve the dying embers of quality have been doing so for almost a decade now.

- perhaps one problem is the price one has to pay by ‘giving of themselves’ to create something good being too high these days.

- what is primarily different between the present and the past in these terms is technology. we are on a bridge to the future that may develop a more utopian society than we could believe at the moment.

- i am drawn more to massively multiplayer online games more than most other mediums. the reason being, you are the active participant in the story and you are meeting other people from around the world as avatars (in a form of yours and their creative choice)

- it could be that the ‘creative’ waters have been polluted to such an extent that children from more recent generations grow up being incapable of rising to the same heights as previous artists. thus everyone lowers their expectations, accepts mediocre work. they are being graded on a relative curve.

- these days it’s more important to have high self-esteem even if it is not earned or deserved. the work brought from pain and toil is seen as the mentality of premature old age. comments about mediocre/incompetent work is only seen as negativity/hostility rather than constructive criticism.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:51 pm 129. texexpatriate:

I meant to spell that m-o-v-i-e-s.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:51 pm 130. Old Hoplite:

Couldn’t agree with you more, Dr. Hanson.
I’m hip deep in studying for my Masters in History and am spending far more time with Thucydides, Plato and Xenophon (also Keegan, Snodgrass and yourself) then I am pop ‘culture’ or what passes for it. Words like honor, honesty and integrity don’t seem to pass muster anymore; instead we hear diversity (meaning old dead white guys need not apply) and economic justice (soak the rich) and good Lord save us, what a great guy Mao was.
I am also following your example, be kinder, be more polite, yeild the right of way, let the young mother take your seat on the train. Show in your own way that we still have value and real culture.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:56 pm 131. Jonathan Bailey:

I’m with you Dr. H. At age 50 I have not watched any programming, news or otherwise on NBC SeeBS or ABC in well over a decade. I have no interest in sports and might go to a movie (with my kids) once or twice a year. The popular culture just leaves me cold and I certainly don’t feel like being lectured to by some air-headed Hollywood type who believes that because our country is not absolutely perfect it is somehow evil.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:09 pm 132. Ge0ffrey:

I’ve been tuning into Mexican telenovelas with Spanish subtitles (Destilando Amor, and Manana Es Para Siempre, for example). Riveting stories drive intricate plots, good fights evil and wins, villains always get their comeuppance, families and prayer count for something, and priests and nuns do saintly deeds.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:19 pm 133. Mimi Briskey:

From Southern Mimi…..this is my lifestyle exactly. Glad to see I am not alone

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:34 pm 134. Ken:

If this had been written as a list I could have ticked them off point by point.

Giving up this cultural decadence (and that is what it is) is very liberating and revealing.

I changed from being rather inwardly reclusive person to one who talks, jokes, and laughs with the cashiers and waitresses and people waiting at the crosswalk waiting for a light to change.

I’m happier for it and I believe they are too. Life is good.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:36 pm 135. Anonymous:

THANKS!!!

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:47 pm 136. Erin Haust:

I too have been slowly slipping away from popular culture. I am a young(ish) mother of 3 and simply abhor what is available to them on television. Books, believe it or not, aren’t necessarily any better. Field trips are focused on “environmental awareness” (aka Green Indoctrination) instead of history, true science, arts, and literature. The Disney Channel is obsessed with green culture, Nickelodean is obsessed with the president, late night television is obsessed with Sarah Palin (at least the mocking of her), and prime time tv is obsessed with the liberal agenda. You hit the nail on the head. Pop culture isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I much prefer seeking out knowledge, truth and news from alternative and varied resources, and I don’t apologize for it. I don’t think I’m missing a thing.

Erin Haust
Minneapolis Conservative Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/x-2927-Minneapolis-Conservative-Examiner

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:51 pm 137. Sallie:

Thanks!! I agree…

Personally I like Sponge Bob. He doesn’t lie, cheat, steal, sneak in sexual innuendos, or go naked..usually. My hero, and he has his own crabby patties and pickles..

Also, agree with #130 and a couple of others.
I think we have lost a generation to people afraid to discipline, teach ethics, morals, say NO and mean it.. Sad , they will pay a dear price.

The news on TV drives me crazy!!! even FOX.. Same old stories, blown up and out of proportion. It’s like they’re constantly yelling.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:01 pm 138. Christian:

My family stopped watching TV 12 years ago, and have seceded from popular culture in other ways as well.

To borrow a phrase from public education, we are internal dropouts.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:01 pm 139. david foster:

Psychobarb…”Who was it who said, “If you are not a liberal in your youth you have no heart and if you are not a conservative when older you have no brain.””

Often attributed to Churchill, but I think it may have been said earlier by Clemenceau.

In any event, our current “progressives” seem lacking in both heart AND brain departments.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:24 pm 140. logos1j1:

You’ve just told my story.

Is it me or have commercials gone from just silly (and occasionally funny) to knocking on the door of insanity. I’m wondering if they’ve changed or just me.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:26 pm 141. eon:

Excellent piece, Dr. Hanson.

As Mr. Bunter once said to Lord Peter Wimsey (in the TV version of “The Nine Tailors”) “our backgrounds are poles apart, but our standards are not”.

I have never had any particular interest in sports; what little interest I had in baseball died with the first major league strike. Other sports have always seemed rather pointless to me; I agree wholeheartedly with Samuel Clemens definition of golf, “a pleasant walk spoiled”.

My last foray to the theater was to see the third “Lord of the Rings” movie. (An impressive trilogy, that.) Since then, what few new films I see are on DVD, just like the older films I prefer. The same goes for TV shows; right now I’m watching the complete “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” collection, and find myself laughing even harder than I did when I first saw them on PBS thirty years ago. Now, at age 51, I actually get most of the jokes aimed at adults, and the ones at the expense of the British government of the early Seventies, which would be just as accurate if aimed at Gordon Brown & Co. today.

Movie-wise, I remain a science fiction and fantasy/horror fan. (Just before sitting down at the computer, I was watching Universal’s “The Invisible Ray”, with Karloff and Lugosi, from 1936.) However, with the exception of a few efforts like the “Rings” trilogy, I find most of the recent efforts in even those areas not worth wasting time on. One exception is the “Watchmen” movie; an amazingly well-done adaptation of a story most people thought was unfilmable, and in the process Sam Hamm, the screenwriter, solved a major problem with the plot of the original story. Kudos to all concerned on that one.

I stopped watching broadcast TV when it went digital; where I live, reception was iffy when it was analog. I stopped paying for satellite service years ago, and have never had cable. I have better things to do with my money- like pay my property taxes on time, as you said.

For news, I rely on the radio, the Internet, and my local newspapers- always carefully cross-checking between the three to see who’s actually gotten the story right. So far, it’s in favor of the radio and the World Wide Web; the newspapers are a bit too fond of just reprinting whatever the NYT or Reuter’s put out.

My other reading is a combination of history, purely technical works, and fiction ranging from classic mystery and SF (such as Dorothy L. Sayers and John W. Campbell) to more recent writers of merit such as David Weber, Eric Flint, and John Ringo. I occasionally wade through a Clive Cussler novel, just for his knowledge of maritime history and classic cars. (They sort of make up for his increasingly-improbable plots and chronic inability to follow his own continuity.)

Most “serious novelists” and “thriller” authors of today I find almost unreadable. I am still trying to figure out how Kyle Mills, John Gresham, Patricia Cornwell, et al., manage to be best-selling authors. (But I could never understand how Jacqueline Susann managed it, either.)

I remain hopeful that one day, Tom Clancy will write a full-blooded, no-bull, in-your-face science fiction novel. Until then, I will continue to reread the works of H. Beam Piper on a regular basis.

I am fortunate in the music department, in that there’s a local station around here (WLVQ-FM aka “Q-FM96″) that plays classic rock from the Seventies and earlier 24/7. I’ll take Don Felder, the Stones, Blue Oyster Cult, and Led Zeppelin over the present-day crop of “three-chords-and-grimace-musically” types any day of the week.

If all this makes me a “cultural exile”, all I can say (to paraphrase Ronald Reagan)is, “I didn’t leave popular culture; it left me”.

clear ether

eon

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:26 pm 142. Michael:

Dr.Hanson,
Do you by chance like the movie Hoosiers?

Also, I thought We Were Soldiers with Mel Gibson was good for a recent movie. Also, the movie Taken from last year I thought was rather good, and had a conservative bias if anything.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:41 pm 143. ANNIE B:

Actually, I read and watch a great deal of modern cultural production – just not that which is the product of the ‘entrenched’ kulture-mongers.

I read books on the internet – both fanfic and newfic – by writers with more talent than the pulp hacks and fewer ( read no) gatekeepers applying PC shackels.
I watch YouTube – and various vid sights – for reportage both local and varied ( and again often non-employment-motivated).
I watch movies from around the world – each of which may have it’s own PC baggage but in collective provide more of a cultural portfolio. Many Bollywood movies are more ‘American’ than anything Hollywood has produced since the 50’s.
Ditto for the music dowloadable, free from any studio posturing.

There is plenty of culture out there to enjoy. It’s just not where the lib-lite tell us it is.

(But then, who thinks they would know culture if it bit them?)

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:41 pm 144. biblio44:

“So what’s left of the life of American culture? I try to read novels, the older the better—Knut Hamsun, Conrad, James Jones.”

Oh, Victor, you’re sooo Cultured that it takes my breath away! And Hamsun – who would’ve guessed? All this time I thought you got your politics from Ayn Rand.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:45 pm 145. jb:

Dr. Hanson, I feel your pain.

For the sheer entertainment value of it, (costs you $0.00), why not watch a beautiful young girl create a movie before your very eyes with nothing but a bucket of sand.

Hollywood has nobody with this kind of talent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhxNGz4Ew1o

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:51 pm 146. StephenW:

Try watching Chinese movies Victor. “The Road Home” would be a great place to start. This is one way my wife and I have rebelled against our present day culture – enjoying another one. Great story of loyalty and awesome cinematography.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:52 pm 147. 438miler:

I told a colleague that I should have been born in 1872, rather than 1972 – it seems I am not alone. Although I am only 37, I sometimes feel much older.

It’s been a slow withdrawal. I grew up on the NY Times, we just went to only Saturday and Sunday editions – each day takes only about 15 minutes to get through and then I am done. We decided to pull the plug because of the cost, and also after the 4th week in a row of Frank Rich writing about how white men were a dying breed, and they’d better get out of the way and they were the cause of all of the problems and……

As per sports, I was a big follower until the late 90’s. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when Jorge Posada of the Yankees, upon signing his first long term contract, stated “now I have security for my family’. He’d made around 20 million total in the seven years previous. I see. This was around 2004 or so. He has a child with a serious condition, which I would think would lend itself to some humility, and I expected him to at least say thank you, but I guess that would be too much to hope for.

I keep thinking cable TV is next, we use netflix a lot, and I have hundreds of channels and I watch History channel maybe once a week. Our kids watch the current dreck (friday nights only!) – they are in the celebrity / fashion vortex despite our efforts. I watched IOUSA online via netflix and it’s great.

I grew up on sports and comic books – Mr. Miller I have DD #158 and everything else since, and although I thought I had become a cynical grizzled fool, I realize that I am not the only one who recognizes the vapid nonsensical crap that our country thinks is ‘entertainment’.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:59 pm 148. dynomitejim:

It can all be a bit distracting. My suggestion is go buy some land. Get an axe and start chopping. Everything begins to clear up. I came out of the cultural fog with some clarity.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:13 pm 149. seanmahair:

// the dark ages began when bush took office. the culture-monks withdrawing to the underground monastery to preserve the dying embers of quality have been doing so for almost a decade now.//

Oh good grief. I had no idea that George Bush was so fearsomely powerful. He is responsible for the crudeness of our culture, the attacks on 9/11, our financial problems, greenhouse gases and I’m sure Pluto being demoted from a planet.

Get a new whipping boy. That dog will just NOT hunt anymore.

You want to know who’s a fault for all of this……….US………….WE, all of us who sat there in front of our boob tubes and watched as the shows got more violent, more sexually explicit, more verbally abusive, more politically correct and more like what we are instead of what we should be. All of us who stayed home and didn’t vote or worse who voted for people we didn’t research who ran on platforms we didn’t understand. All of us who allowed the minority to frame the debate, who refused to stand up for liberty and freedom and who admired personalities instead of integrity.

I know I will win no friends with this tirade, but I am heartily tired of the same old Booooooooooosh did it mentality. Seriously though, I am simply tired of it all, and yes I’m old but in a couple of years you won’t have to worry about people like me. We’ll be too expensive to keep alive and so our voiced will be permanently silenced. Patience is a virtue.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:31 pm 150. punditius:

About 20 years ago, in my early 40s, I realized that I no longer lived in the country I grew up in. Somehow, I had emigrated to a foreign country, without changing my place of residence.

The country I grew up in still seems to exist. There is some evidence of this on the internet. But I can’t seem to get back there.

I’m not real happy living in this foreign country. I’m better off financially than I used to be, and have greater comforts and, at least for a while, better medical care. But I miss being able to feel like a part of some larger, better thing.

The residents of this country are nice people. They do seem to be willing to let their government take care of them, so long as it doesn’t interfere in their personal pleasures, so I can’t have much respect for them, and that’s part of the problem. The exception consists of that portion of the citizenry who engage in military service. I wonder what they think about their contemporaries, and what effect they’ll have on the country in the future.

I’ve managed to create a bubble in time for myself, recreating to some extent the place I came from. Ironically, the technological advances in the country I live in now have made this possible.

Now & then I bump into someone else who used to live where I came from. They seem to be making the same accommodations I have.

For a long time, I would try to change things to be more like they were back home, but that has failed. People here just don’t think the way I do, and regard my values as either without meaning or positively wrong. Unfortunately, my efforts seem to have made my children citizens of neither country, past or present. I hope that they can find their way to a home that I liked as much as the one I no longer have.

As a result of all this, I’ve come to realize that death is a gift. It’s not that I am ready to accept it immediately, but I think there will come a time where I will not be unhappy to receive it.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:39 pm 151. steveg:

It would surprise me if there is ever a good western to come out of Hollywood again. Clint Eastwood is too old, and the leading men today are laughable in tough guy roles.

It is bad enough that the films today are of poor quality, but to not like half of the actors in a movie makes it unwatchable.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:39 pm 152. scott:

Me too.

Allthough I do watch (or at least have the tube going) a bit of the NFL as I’ve seen everything the Animal Channel has to offer.

I actually have cultural nausea. American culture stinks. We’ve gone rotten. I can’t even stand going to church. Church is like the pubbie party. Trying to out rat the rats. Or a first class woman who wants to be a second class male.

Most y’all probably sneer at biblical eschatology but this sure feels like The Great Apostasy to me.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:54 pm 153. RKV:

Get yourselves to http://www.pandora.com. Build your own radio station. Personally, I can recommend Leo Kottke, Dave Grisman and Jerry Douglas. Forget what gets broadcast on the am and fm.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:55 pm 154. john from cinncinatti:

i ain’t giving up on the kids. my dad was in wwll, and i wanted to be like him. fortunately i wasn’t lt. Dan or Forrest Gump. so in order to give my self the hero’s welcome i had to do something heroic. i have coached young men in football for some time now. i constantly tell them to stop doing something because its not manly, and i often hear them say it to each other. if the life lessons my dad taught me aren’t passed on to another generation then whose narrative is salient? his grandson and namesake returns from Iraq in the coming weeks.Semper Fi

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:29 pm 155. XiaoMei:

A word to the wise:

I tried to get with the current literary scene via the novels of Chuck Palahniuk. BOMB.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:30 pm 156. A&W:

VDH
Read most all you have to say with great interest here at PJM. You inspired me to purchase a couple of your books and they did not disapoint. Will read more of yours and would like to attend one of your tours. This is the second time I sense, I believe your ready for a few days in that most glorious place!! Take a drive up to Huntington and have a couple great days of just enjoying fresh air, smell of the pines. Take care.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:45 pm 157. Seth Poole:

Whew! I thought it was just me that was tired of the society that I’m surrounded by and have sort of “dropped out”. Some of my favorite times are taking my ten year old German Shepherd for a walk, at least when his hips aren’t bothering him too much, or sweeping the leaves off the lawn (its that time of year), or just spending an hour in the library checking out the books. I don’t go to movies, watch much tv, hardly ever listen to music, couldn’t name a hip hop artist, the latest hottest actor or which hollywood gal is sleeping with what hollywood guy. Thanks Doc.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:45 pm 158. Bruce Arlen:

Victor, you have undoubtedly described a condition shared by thousands… millions perhaps. I too miss the movies, I miss the corner store, I miss my baseball team sticking with the same players because it is a team, and at this juncture ( for good or ill) I miss President Bush for the common decency he imbued. The gradual decline of our popular culture and our very way of life seems like it’s been pushed off the cliff by this Obama administration and it’s gang of elite snickerers.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:53 pm 159. Cedric:

Mr. Hansen,
Ditto. I’m a 55 year old; 13 years ago my wife set our tv out on the curb. Our children then 9, 7, 5, and 3 have grown up advantaged by both the loss of the negative influence and the gain of what has filled the time. We replaced the tv with a vcr and dvd player hooked into an old Amiga monitor where we enjoyed viewing movies, videos and old tv offerings selected primarily from the past 1960s and earlier. The attention span of our children is noticeably longer than their peers. Their breadth of knowledge has been enhanced by their experience of being freed from recent broadcast and cable tv mediocity and vulgarity whether news, sports or entertainment. Growing up watching and enjoying Buster Keaton in The General, the old Bell Telephone Science series, silent movies of Rin Tin Tin, and Nanook, as well as Milton Friedman’s excellent Freedom to Choose series, even old Perry Mason, Roy Rogers and so on. We also had more time to listen to good music and old radio shows such as Jack Benny and the Shadow and to read aloud Ivanhoe, The Deerslayer, Freddy the Detective, Hardy Boys, Thornton Burgess, Plato, etc. There is so little time and so much written and recorded that is great or just simply entertaining without being retrogressive or nihilistic. Truth, beauty and morality have been displaced by cynicism, ugliness and relativism in the movies and tv of the past quarter century. A dysfunctional subculture has taken root and spread like Creeping Charley from New York City and California throughout our country. All Americans are the poorer it. The internet is breaking up this rot by destroying the power of the media titans, at least momentarily.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:00 pm 160. Saltherring:

I too have rejected modern culture. I haven’t been to a theatre in 20 years, watch only one network TV series (NCIS) and consider 99% of todays movie/TV/music personalities as overpaid, talentless clowns. I wouldn’t waste my time reading/watching/listening to anything generated by the fake news media. Prefessional sports bore me, particular the gang-culture NBA. I much prefer college football and basketball. Today’s politicians (Democrat and Republican) are sadly lacking in ideas, backbone and personal integrity. The majority of America’s youth are as plastic, ill-mannered, poorly educated, self-absorbed and phony as their Hollywood-based culture. They bore me.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:07 pm 161. J Raczyla:

Vic,

I think you’ve adequately described the weariness many of us feel with the bankrupt status of a majority of our popular culture and the corresponding nostalgia as a desire for something with substance. (Some of us tire of the free bread and circuses.) In this time when we all seem to be turning from our prior distractions to I was wondering about something you said during a C-SPAN interview i stumbled upon. You started taking calls and, between a few rather wacky ones, a caller asked you about your religious beliefs. You said you believed in some sort of “transcendence”, gave a corresponding classical example and left it cryptically at that. Since the idea of transcendence seemed to come up in your article on Nemesis, i was wondering, what is the status of your belief in this “transcendence”? It seems odd that, with all the wisdom I’ve come to expect from you, your answer for these dark times is that we should all “do something” to right the imbalance wrought by the Letterman’s of the world. Could this be an existential question?

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:22 pm 162. e:

Mr. Hanson,

Its easier to be less a part of current culture because you are old*. Also society has changed several times which has made you acutely aware of the impermanence and general irrelevance of most of popular culture. the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s all have very distinct features and the mood of 2010s is being decided right now. My guess is disappointment in Obama and disillusion of policies like global warming will be prime features.

*Older than the target demographic

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:39 pm 163. HalifaxCB:

Some folks think that tuning out modern culture means somehow living in a bunker; I’d say just the opposite is true. Tuning out modern popular culture just means tuning out the ceaseless noise of generally vapid people who want you to pay attention to them, and tuning in those things really worth paying attention to. It means be active rather than passive in the attention to ideas, and is one of the separators between childhood and adulthood.

I know for me one of the greatest benefits is that once one drops the artificial barriers of time, whole new vistas of engaging voices become accessible. I think of it this way – if I had a friend whose painting influenced me strongly were to suddenly die, would I stop considering his work relevant? One doubts that. If that person died last year, or the year before, would the art be any less “of-my-time”? Not if it was good. And if the work was really strong, how long would it be before I now longer considered it contemporary? 20 years? 50 years? 400 years? (Shoot, in my math work, I still use the Pythagorean theorem, and how old is that ? And is Aristophanes play “The Clouds” any less amusing – or relevant – today than it was way back when? SNL pales in comparison.)

One of the greatest pleasures of tuning out the noise is that it gives one the intellectual space to extend one’s concept of the present. For those ever visiting DC, take the time to wander the halls of the National Gallery, and visit the Rembrandts. Put away the odd costumes of the subjects, and think of the subjects as there, alive, and the painting as a quiet visual converation between you (as a viewer), the subject, and Rembrandt. It certainly beats any thrash metal concert, or Shepard Fairey poster, in terms of understanding the human condition.

The same goes for just about any cultural activity. Who speaks more imediately about what America is and can be – Obama with his teleprompter and near adolescent speech writers, or Walt Whitman? Whitman is America writ large; Obama in a 100 years will simply be remembered as the first black president (who, as the last Democratic president, lost the office to the first woman president, a former governor from Alaska, but I digress )

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:59 pm 164. HalifaxCB:

BTW Dr. Hanson – re. being in the same boat you mentionned in your first paragraph; judging by this thread, I hope your boat is large, because you’ve got a whole lot of shipmates It’s a very pleasant surprise!

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:11 pm 165. Sierra Bedrock:

Yes, you have clearly described my own silent departure from American popular culture over the past 20 years. It is all too infused with agenda-driven causes and propoganda, unfair negativism about America, and attacks on our founders, entrepreneurs, families, and institutions. Instead, I enhance and savor the traditional values of hard work, patience, and resilience gained from the rigors and pleasures of California farm life and tight family bonds. It is better to tend my grape vines than listen to biased mainstream news or violent movies/TV. In their place, I’ve been watching and enjoying Korean dramas with subtitles. Thank you Dr. Hanson for your calm well-reasoned essays — they help strengthen our community against the cultural rot.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:39 pm 166. Lcdr Roy E. Hansen, USN, Retired:

Dear Victor:

I’ve enjoyed many of your books over the years. One of my Sons introduces me to his friends as “he’s pushing 80″. If he only knew. Your current essay,”Confessions of a cultural drop-out”, hit the nail right on the head. If I didn’t have people like you making sense and the internet, I would have to spend more time at Hooter’s. Keep up the good work!!
Roy Hansen, with an E.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:51 pm 167. Terry:

I think you have touched on something very profound here – the alienation of a substantial proportion of the population from contemporary culture. And, I don’t think this is confined to just older people either, many younger people evidently feel the same.
I won’t add anything more – the other comments said it all – except to say that there obviously exists a large void in the market just waiting to be filled by the politically incorrect. How ironic that the new counter-cultural revolution will be conservative.

Oct 19, 2009 - 12:23 am 168. CanaGuy:

Someone above mentioned that there was a distinct lack of “trolls” attacking you for this article. The reason is that you have struck an accord with both sides of the fence. The Lefties post their agreement because you have outlined the reason they hate America. Those on the Right post their agreement because they pine for the America of the past that you have conjured up. Congrats for unifying us, however fleeting the moment may be.

Oct 19, 2009 - 12:24 am 169. jodetoad:

We have lost our compass – it can’t point north if it points at me. In seeking mass appeal, appeal has devolved to the lowest common denominators. Everybody has ego, greed, and some kind of sexual drive.

As a classical instrumentalist, what I see in serious music is ego. A while back, the notion of doing something ‘different’ was promoted as creativity. The rationale was that since Mozart and Chopin etc. had said everything there was to say using conventional techniques, constructs and standards, that one had to do something unique and different, throwing out accepted basics, with the objective being making a name for one’s self. Where they missed the boat was not seeing that the objective is no longer musical art for its own sake, but ego. So serious music has withered, with people in universities using hammers and wrenches to play a piano with trash laid over the strings, so it doesn’t sound like a ‘conventional’ piano. People work very hard at creating systems of composition and relationships in sound that are so ugly nobody listens to it. The creators smugly assure themselves the listening public is too uneducated to appreciate it.

The problem with the lowest common denominator is that it is both low and common. Tossing the art out of music may be satisfying to the ego, but ones work has to compete with jackhammers, traffic noise, bellowing cattle, and other common sounds, many of which are more attractive because less contrived and self-centered.

And in other areas, greed may be funny sometimes, but mostly it is boring. The appeal to prurient interest is even more boring – there are only so many members and orifices, only so many possible combinations, even in groups, and when it is everywhere, as it is today, it is simply tedious. So many efforts have been made to shock us that we are pretty much unshockable these days. What with ‘Piss Christ’, beheadings, and omnipresent porn, the real novelty any more is actual art. So many have tried to manipulate us for so many reasons, it is refreshing to find the work done for its own sake, unselfconsciously. It is easier to find such work from over 50 years ago.

So the crop of pop musicians all trying so hard to be different that they all look the same, the women hiding whatever talent they possess behind a veneer of sluttiness, the movies with great effects and little content, all end up looking like the result of attention-starved children. Rap is exemplary of this – bang the drum, thump the bass, vocalize a stream of anger and vulgarity. So creative… but Neanderthals probably did something quite similar.

If we ever get past the me, me, me, the old ideas that consumed the greatest creative minds are still there. They are old words, beauty, truth, love, war, faith, death: eternal words – and there is much more to be said about them than about greed, sex, and ego.

Oct 19, 2009 - 1:11 am 170. Ohiolad:

Reading this article and all the comments was a comforting exercise because so many of your experiences have paralleled miine and I realized that I was not the only one feeling the need to drop out of a modern culture that no longer seems spiritually healthy. I too dropped my cable subscription a dozen years ago, ending what could only be described as a mindless addiction, and now have a 50″ plasma TV that is used only for an occasional DVD. I too find myself becoming a laudator temporis acti which I just assumed was what happens when one gets to a certain age and feel the need to constantly remind my children about what my life was like growing up in the 1950’s which seemed like halcyon days compared to what it is happening now. I too sense the culture has degraded over the intervening years to more and more take on the values, attitudes, and language of the underclass and wonder how we could ever hope to maintain a great civilization this way. It’s no wonder that Muslims dispise and reject the American culture they have been exposed to because I detest much of it myself. I’m amused when I find my school-aged daughter singing pop tunes from 30 or 40 years ago, and I assume it is because modern pop music is such a boring wasteland lacking any sense of musicality. Lastly, I too have taken up reading history, lately ancient Roman history in particular, perhaps trying to find parallels to our own times and to get some clue as where we might be headed. I have just read several books about Pompeii which I found captivating because it allowed one to imagine living the life of an ordinary Roman at the height of the empire. I am certain they thought as we do now that their way of life and their empire would last forever.

Oct 19, 2009 - 2:15 am 171. Japundit:

Thank you so much for this.

Until now, I really thought it was only me, and only because I was getting old.

Oct 19, 2009 - 2:21 am 172. Old Fat Hoosier:

If I could write well, I would have written this. I dropped out of some of these things even earlier, the network news for instance, and still cling to what’s left of the NFL, but the rest of it comes as close to expressing my point of view as I could imagine. Pop culture could be bulldozed to fill in the Grand Canyon and I wouldn’t notice. Nor would the rest of the world I suspect and certainly not generations to come.

Oct 19, 2009 - 2:25 am 173. Emma:

Wow, I thought it was just me. It’s good to know I’m not out here on my own.

Oct 19, 2009 - 2:54 am 174. JoeSwiss:

Right on, media dropout myself.

Appreciate your reading tips.

Started looking into “Knut Hamsun” 1859 – 1952 — wiki says Knut “supported Germany throughout both world wars.” Plus a few other loathsome political leanings.

I enjoy your articles and respect your opinions, VDH. But what’s up with this Knut thing?

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:02 am 175. Neil McCauley:

One hundred and fifty-nine comments in less than twenty-four hours? And the American film/television/music industry is flat on it’s ass. So you’re obviously not the only one who’s stepped away from modern popular culture.

I like it when you opine on cultural stuff. This should be a regular feature of your blog – what you’re reading, listening to, something cool on TCM. The “Collapse of Obama” is pretty well-covered, won’t be advanced until the mid-term elections wipe the smirk off his face.

In the meantime, go rent “IRON MAN” and “TAKEN.” Both movies were huge hits and their “conservative” themes might surprise you.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:31 am 176. Snorri Godhi:

The first rule for enjoying movies is not to expect that, in the next few years, as many great movies will be produced as in all previous cinema history. Once one accepts that most new movies will be mediocre at best, the great movies come as a pleasant surprise. In the last few years, I can mention at the very least The Prestige, 3:10 to Yuma, The Dark Knight (I guess that I am a Christian Bale fan), Zodiac, Watchmen, and Gran Torino; and that is leaving out comedies and older movies that I saw recently for the first time.

There is also the under-rated Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The plot is a bit confusing, but it is morbidly fascinating to see academic freedom being abolished by a government ministry. Mind you, this is not the usual fascism: it is PC fascism. The Ministry of Magic does not make up a non-existent enemy: instead, it justifies its tyranny by denying the existence of a real enemy.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:33 am 177. cfbleachers:

VDH

We are not dropping out of our culture, our culture is dropping out of us.

I just wrote a comment on Roger Simon’s latest piece…in which I relate my theory of how NeoCom’s attempt to freeze frame us in 1968. They foist the race/class/gender warfare upon us, in which they are always the hero and middle America is always Archie Bunker.

But, I left out the self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, self-glorifying, self-congratulating, grandstanding, peacock displaying, preening, trash-talking, spotlight-hoggers in our cultural gathering places and arenas. And these are just the writers and commentators.

I have never seen so many large and athletic men…weep…in my 56 years on the planet. Ok, ok…I get the “it’s ok for men to show emotion” thing…but have all our Gladiators turned to Gladioli?

NeoCom’s have stolen our information stream, so the NY Times is simply a propaganda rag. Movies,…all of Hollywood…is part of the same propaganda tripe. A one note echo chamber.

We haven’t dropped out of the culture, Victor. We just never were comfotable playing the foils in the long con…of the NeoCom’s who have stolen it.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:41 am 178. Dblade:

And you wonder why no one makes pop culture for conservatives, when you all retreat from it? If you isolate yourself from popular culture you lose the ability to understand the cultural references a lot of people grow up with, and paint your entire movement as out of touch.

Liberal control of hollywood didn’t happen in a vacuum. What happened is that conservatism retreated into a neverland of westerns and 50s sitcoms/homeschooling and didn’t really attempt to understand or create mass culture, and ceded an entire media to liberals, who were more than willing to. You can retreat all you want VDH, you just are cementing mass culture as a liberal bastion along with the rest of the sheep who think pop culture is some evil to be avoided.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:48 am 179. Rob:

I am aware of the pop culture, I just don’t understand why so many conisder it as important in their own lives.

I read more nofiction and biographies than I do modern novels.

There is plenty of good new musci out there, and it’s easier to find than ever before, but you have to weed it out of the chaff of the internet.

I rarely watch TV or films, and I too find that older productions were better. I recenly discovered theater and the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Va. I’d rather sprnd my money and time there if I’m seeking entertainment.

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:07 am 180. Martin Snigg:

36

No TV 5 yrs
Rarely cinema
No mags, newspaper
Can’t tolerate advertising, shopping
Popular music: never.
My professional sports team had a ‘Green Round’: poisoned and politicised.

Replaced all the above with real goods.

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:15 am 181. Larry Radtke:

Dr. Hanson, I’m with you. But there is one aspect of popular culture that has shown me that perhaps all is not lost: the resurgence of Ayn Rand’s novels, particularly “Atlas Shrugged.” This phenomenon indicates that, like you and me, at least some thoughtful individuals sense the void “progressive” education has left in our culture. But otherwise, we are probalbly witnessing the phenomenon that many of the real Atlases are shrugging.

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:25 am 182. Brian Richard Allen:

The Good Doctor Hanson has once again been patrolling the no-mans-land in the deepest reaches of my psyche.

God bless his soul!

B A – L A – CA — and Far Away

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:20 am 183. Maewynia:

I am amazed. You are describing my life. Except that I stopped watching all TV in 1979. I am so saddened by the hollowness of what passes for culture. But I am now focused at last on politics and war, which is very odd for a person who never even voted in the past. But I vote now and I work for and contribute to my candidates. It’s all we have left, after the ‘amusements’ are gone. Will this turn back America? Time will tell…

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:24 am 184. Lulapink:

I believe the word is curmudgeon.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:37 am 185. pelaut:

VDH: You dishearten me. I thought you better.

I had all your Weltschmertz in 1960. I left America in 1969, and haven’t gone home but for visits. Though still a proud American, I and my sons have had lives without drugs and rock’n'roll (but lots of sex), and without movies and TV. In their absence we have garnered enough time and perspective to have had many more lifetimes than most vapid Americans.

This isn’t a Boomer sickness, nor is it midlife crises. If you see the whole trajectory as I have since the 60s, then you know that Gordon DeSpain (#23) has the complete answer.

It’s irreversible. Go Galt.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:19 am 186. Dennis:

Doc, You’ve been reading my mail.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:37 am 187. Old Bob:

I was conceived in 1943 and born in 1944; grew up in the aftermath of the War. The block I grew up on was like a small town. I went to the university in 1962 and for the next ten years watched everything slide downhill. I think it was in the middle 70s I became a cultural dropout. Thanks for a very good piece!

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:51 am 188. MFMc:

Thank you, Professor Hanson, for a post with which so many of us identify. There are a couple of organizations trying to encourage alternate approaches to cultural matters your readers might want to explore. For those interested in “creating a Culture of Liberty and Personal Responsibility” : http://theculturealliance.org/
For those interested in a Judeo-Christian view of culture: http://imagejournal.org/

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:52 am 189. another Chuck:

Don’t you think the low culture has always been with us; it was America’s evil invention to produce it, as it were, on an industrial scale. We are after all the nation of Henry Ford. To resist it is undemocratic snobbery and unAmerican. Well then we’ll have to be bad Americans to pass on something resembling our good old country to the kids. Monks hide away to save what can be saved, and there’ll be enough time for that. Right now we haven’t lost yet. Drop out? Better to loudly and proudly drop up.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:54 am 190. HoosierHawk:

I have undergone the same “withdrawl from culture”. I do still watch the NFL, but like #6 Zach, I’m a Colts fan, and they wear white hats. Sometimes I don’t think I dropped out from Culture, I think that popular culture has been on journey to somewhere that I am not going for a long time. Let’s just stay it went it’s way and I went mine.

OT, but speaking of the NFL, I could not believe NE this weekend. They really spanked Tenn., and felt great about. When the cheater (coach), started Brady in the second half, the most significant record in the game was set. BB is the lowest class coach of all time. You are up by 7 scores at halftime, and you want more points.

Peyton Manning could never set the records broken by Brady this weekend, his coach has too much class.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:59 am 191. quesnay:

Victor,

I thought my wife and I were the only ones in Northern California who “tuned out” of our pop culture, until I read this post. What I perceive is the dumbing down of America with politically correct movies, books, TV,poetry, art, etc. I am in my mid 50’s and grew up with a larger than life father, who like so many other young men in his time, learned the lessons and values of life at a young age in the midst of a depression and on the beaches of Peleliu and Okinawa. He infused in my brother and I a clear delineation of what was right and what was wrong.

Today, so many of our youth have no idea what is right and what is wrong. Their value systems have been compromised by the ever expanding systemic diseases of multi-culturalism and moral equivalency now firmly embedded in our culture. We have two teenage children, both by the way in private schools, whose value systems are attacked daily (in so many subtle and not so subtle ways)by the paparazzi of this culture who try to plant seeds of doubt and confusion into their young minds. It seems that almost every book that they have to read has something to do with racism, sexism. social justice, well, you get the point. It is sometimes a difficult and challenging task to refute what they have learned and guide them in the right direction. Although my dad is gone, I still look to him for the strength and knowledge to raise our children the right way.

How did we allow our culture to go from Bonanza to Brokeback Mountain in a little more than a generation? How did we ever get to the point where a firefighter would get suspended for putting an American Flag on his locker, while a “filmmaker” like Michael Moore is treated like a hero for trying to cut down our nation?

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:00 am 192. Naif Mabat:

There are few good new Hollywood movies each year.

Check out “The Wrestler” (2008) with Mickey Rourke.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:20 am 193. Steve C.:

I don’t know who said it, but this summarizes my take on sports, “Act like you been there before”.

I grew up outside NYC and was lucky enough to see the tail end of Yankee greatness. Marris, Mantle, Ford and Bobby Richardson were my boyhood idols. And I was fortunate to see them play in old Yankee stadium. What impressed me most was their skill combined with humility. Yes, there was always an element of show manship but the general approach these stars took was a diffident “shucks I was just doing my job with the talent the good Lord give me”.

Later we learned (thanks Jim Bouton) that all was not what it seemed in the House that Ruth Built. But at least I had my memories of Marris shyly easing out of the dugout to tip his cap to a rousing crowd.

That’s what disturbs me most, sports has become rawer, coarser the it was in the past. We have gone from subtle like “White Shoes” Johnson to overt in your face triumphalism. As if catching a football in the end zone is equivalent to marching into a hail of bullets at Gettysburg while earning a million bucks in the process. And this sort of childish behavior, on and off the field is tolerated by owners more interested in marketing than honor.

It’s ironic, Vince “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” Lombardi could probably not exist in the modern NFL.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:23 am 194. WTD:

Ever try NASCAR?

That and the military channel. That’s about all that left.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:28 am 195. Nick B:

To quote Homer Simpson:

“Why must everything Hollywood makes be so excellent. WHY?!?!”

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:31 am 196. jan van goyen:

I am over fifty and feel the same as VDH
But one has to remember that Hollywood movies, our mass culture and mass advertising is pitched to 20-40 year olds. The faces on TV advertising are 30 years old and under so that must be the target audience of suckers

Medicines and drugs and hair dye are an exception. You see older people in these TV commercials and in print media. But the young ones too

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:32 am 197. Giulietta:

Hello Victor,

Oh how I love readign your blog! You speak to me. Here is a story I want to share.
I was majored in a Film studies at Universtiy of Michigan (late 90s). I transferred when I was 31 years old so that everyone else was one generation younger. I remember one day after we saw “Shane,” a lot of students said (by the way for many of them it was the first time to see “Shane”), “it is so gay.” They said that Shane and Jack Palance character were attracted to each other, or something like that. Call me old fashioned, but what about doing the right thing, courage, sacrifice, good and evil, decency, what means to raise children, what means to grow up, helping others, what means to be American, and a history of this country? Instead, all they got out of it was that Shane was a gay. I couldn’t believe it.
No wonder why movies nowadays are not good or even interesting. Today’s movies are made with people with sensitivity and sensibility (and values or no values)like this.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:32 am 198. Cavedweller:

I, too, dropped out. Some time ago. I haven’t seen a movie in a theater for a little over 8 years. Don’t bother going to theater in the city anymore, don’t subscribe to magazines or newspapers, don’t bother with what passes for pop music. TV went off permanently a couple of months ago. I found I was only using it for the droning noise anyway. Books are my saving grace. Lots of books, both contemporary and classic.

I do have to disagree on one point. You can’t completely disassociate yourself from the mainstream culture while at the same time criticizing it. Everything I need to know about today’s liberal-biased media is online, it’s all at the fingertips. It’s kind of like reading a horror novel. You know the main character (you) is going to live through the experience, but the horror happens around you anyway. It’s inevitable. And eventually the relief at the end comes as it will for today’s crappy media when the money runs out.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:44 am 199. quesnay:

RE: 35 “I also wish more people would get the boot here like Charles does at LGF”

I hope that that this never occurs here as in Little Green Footballs, where any criticism of Charles Johnson or his beliefs is met with scorn, ridicule and banishment from the site. I and everyone else should welcome and encourage people with differing views to post on this board, albeit in a civilized manner. We need more discussion and dialog, not less. The humanities and social sciences departments at out Universities have suffered for many years due to a lack of differing views from the Professoriate. And yes, even creationism, intelligent design, and global warming should be debated in an open society.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:54 am 200. quesnay:

#35 Ron Kean

Is this your example of the type of post you would like on this board?

LudwigVanQuixote
Sun, Oct 18, 2009 10:35:26pm

re: #10 Sharmuta

What is she an expert in?

Being a hateful right wing lunatic who demagogues well to the stupid, shooting animals and being a political albatross.

This is a post from yesterday at Little Green Footballs. It is about Sarah Palin

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:05 am 201. Janet:

Wow. And here I thought I was just gettin’ old. I’ve been having the strongest desire lately to immerse myself in things of days past. Particularly the 50’s era. (Which isn’t exactly my past, since I’m 37.)

Along with being drawn to older black and white films and television shows, I find myself quizzing my parents regularly (and any other willing older person not easily annoyed by my constant questions) about minute details of their lives past. I see things or situations in these older films and shows, and I find myself running back to good ol’ Mom and Dad and asking them, “Was it REALLY like that? Did you REALLY do these things? Have these things? SAY these things??” Things like sharing open phone lines with other households. Attending large dances with orchestras in great big band shells. Sitting in malt shops and watching impromptu dance contests. Going on dates that consisted of a walk and maybe a 10 cent ice cream cone.

Back then, it seemed like so much was going on around you in REAL life. People weren’t constantly looking for distractions from reality. They were taking part in it! Simple as it was then, everyone seemed CONNECTED in a way we don’t seem to be now.

I find myself longing for a time and a perspective and a…mentality, I guess…that I never experienced.

I don’t necessarily shun things of the modern world, like technology. But while I’m happy for how easy and convenient they’ve made things like keeping in touch, I’m saddened by the way they seem to have pulled people OUT of life. In a world where we are technically more connected and supposedly more REAL than ever, it’s ironic how increasing numbers of us are starting to feel so DISconnected, isn’t it?

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:12 am 202. Frank:

I feel the same way Victor. As someone from the “X-Generation”, I find myself disgusted with the vortex of today’s popular culture. The one saving grace here in Utah is a little playhouse called the “Desert Star”, where one can see plays that poke fun at popular culture. So if you’re ever in Salt Lake City people you may want to check it out.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:24 am 203. david foster:

Longtime IBM CEO Tom Watson Jr, in his fine autobiography, mentions his friend Al Williams, who rose from a rough background in a mining town to eventually become IBM’s Executive VP. In seeking to fit in better with wealthy and successful people, Williams followed a three-part self-improvement program:

1)Read the classics
2)Listen to classical music every evening
3)Buy clothes at Brooks Brothers

(This was during the 1930s)

Wonder what a similar “self-improvement” program would look like today?

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:37 am 204. Martin Owens:

You speak for many of us.

I watch TV for the weather and the odd nature show. And that’s about it. The rest is cloying, annoying or just plain stupid.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:38 am 205. Dblade:

Going galt is ridiculous, the problem is that when you isolate yourself you wind up substituting a much worse cultural life for a better one. We already have seen this in contemporary christian culture, they already isolate themselves and produce reams of second-rate, bland crap.

You are not going to learn right and wrong or have an engaging popular culture if you try and hamstring it to fit preconceived ideological notions. Good pop culture is going to come from conservatives who engage the current culture, not from people who idealize a “lost age.”

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:39 am 206. david foster:

Just ran across a quote from Schiller:

“Live with your century, but do not be its creature”

For the last several decades, “educators” have been so focused on trendiness that they have converted most of their students almost entirely into creatures of their own time.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:40 am 207. Jeff Perren:

Bravo! I gave up around the mid-70s, when I was only in my 20s. Post-1968 America simply stopped being America, for the most part.

Fortunately, one can not only enjoy all the riches of the past but create new culture, even if it’s ignored by the mainstream. That’s in part what you appear to be doing with your gestures. Be proud of them. It’s such things that help preserve the good values of the past, and make them viable for the future.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:42 am 208. J. Z.:

My husband and I have also retreated into the world of sports channels and netflix. We get our news off the internet and from the WSJ (which Murdoch is ruining). We’ve seen one new release movie in the past year (Star Trek). I rarely read a book that is less than fifty years old and have cancelled most magazine subscriptions. We’re opting out of the “Booty Call” culture that bombards us from all directions.

That being said, we own a cd and vinyl store and there’s still a lot of excellent new music out there. It is not being served up by radio stations and is generally not given a lot of hype in the popular media or music magazines, but a visit to a good independent music store will still reward one with listening pleasure across a wide spectrum. Some examples of good stuff still out there are: James Hand – Hank inspired country, Samuel James – acoustic slide delta blues, the Decemberists’ “Hazards of Love” – rock and folk tale opera, Shawn Lee – jazzy electronica, Acyalone’s “& the Lonely Ones” – Apollo Theater soul crossed with hip hop, the Rachels – classical. and Michael Cleveland and the Flame Keepers – bluegrass. To name but a few. (There is a larger community of the various arts that flies under the radar of Pop than we might imagine in our disgust with the prevailing bien pensant culture.)

Having said that, however, here’s a prime example of where our “culture” is at. A pair of young leather lesbians (not that there’s anything wrong with that, unless you are one of their parents) were in our store this week. One bought a stack of spoken word cd’s – Anton LeVey, Aleister Crowley and William Burroughs. (Oh, the transgression! Lol.) While I was checking them out, I remarked that I never could get all the way through any of Burroughs’ novels without being bored to sleep (since other people’s drug trips are not very interesting). The young lady, looking surprised, exclaimed, “He wrote books?!”

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:46 am 209. Ever smiling and gentle on my mind:

You just named some of my favorite Artists of all time and I will tell you which ones, and in this order, Jimmy Stewart, Burt Lancaster, Otis Redding (possibly number one here), but also, Bob Seger.
I seem to be stuck in the same time warp, and maybe even an older one, because I never turn off Cary Grant (even the black and whites), or the Old Italian Westerns of Clint Eastwood. I love to watch any movie Doris Day made repeatedly, and I can actually quote the movie “Bringing up Baby” with Catherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, because I own it and watch it when I want to laugh aloud. My favorite scene in any movie ever is so simple in the comedy of it, because it is where Catherine Hepburn’s dress is riding up on her backside, Cary Grant keeps walking so close to her behind, and she keeps trying to make him stop. It makes me happy every single time I watch it. I do think Sandra Bullock comes closer to any actor in capturing the old classics and her movie “The Proposal” did not disappoint me this year.
I am 44 years old and most of the movies I love are not in my day, but of a time before I was born. I also love Lucille Ball and I never turn her off if she is on anything, because she makes me happy.
Here lately I have Dean Martin and the rest of his Rat Pack helping me when I am cleaning or just doing something in my home. They are “Gentle on My Mind” while I work. Most of the artists on my iPod are dead or very old. I have a few exceptions to the new sounds and like the New Texas Country, Charlie Robison “My Hometown “for example. I will always love Kid Rock just because of “Picture” and “All Summer Long”.

I think you would enjoy the movie “Bottle Shock” with Bill Pullman about California Wine Country.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:53 am 210. Jake2:

Ditto: My husband and I never go to the movies anymore. Our dates are now more centered on the relationships we want to enhance. Walks in National Parks, Museums or just sitting by the river and reading a good book. Our kids are the same. They are between the ages of 15 and 21. At this time, they rarely ever go to a movie. I am refusing to put any of my hard earned income into the pockets of those that will ultimately be the downfall of our great nation. I am only one voice, but after reading the posts on this site, my one voice is not alone.

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:02 am 211. Anonymous:

I haven’t watched anything on network TV bar a few major sporting events in 20 years. I haven’t been inside a movie theater now for almost two years.

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:07 am 212. wickerbasket:

I know what your saying and I’m only 23. My grandpa played centerfield for the whitesox in the late forties and early fifties before he went to Korea and got Hepatitis. He played in the minors for ten years after that because he was never the same after being sick. He still hit about four hundred one year in AAA, but he was with the cardinals at that time and they had some hall of famers in the outfield. I say this just to make a point, I’m not bragging. Maybe a little. His roommate was nelly fox who was a hall of famer to be, and he played with Luke Appling too. He and Nelly Fox were both 140 pounds- the stats say 160, but they lie. I can’t remember which one, but one or maybe both would sit with him and tell all of their secrets about playing baseball. He was only twenty at the time, which is why they took the time. The point- this is partly because there’s so many teams, I jsut think its funny. He’ll sit through a game and all the time you’ll hear how bad the white sox are, even when they won the world series. Not near as much during the world series probably, I can’t remember. He makes fun of all the showboating constantly. It’s funny if your there. Anyway. I still like the baseball games, but there’s no doubt that the teams back then were better because there were less teams and probably because they didn’t make much money. My grandpa was gonna get a bonus once, but ran into the wall going for a ball and split his head open. They didn’t give him the bonus because it was a stupid thing to do. He only made five thousand dollars a year. I think maybe we look too much at how things look, home runs, girly sounding voices, showboating, pretending to spout off to the government. We should look more at what it adds to a person. Or at least not look so much at the show we can put on.

I tell you what I do love though- smallville. It was great to see the Sox win the world series too.

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:09 am 213. Barbara:

Ahh, the great saga of America: We elders have lived in the best time and place in history: The westward movement continued via route 66 in the 40s and 50s following WWII to the new world called California. We also got to see inspiring classical westerns and war movies, delightful musicals, many now preserved on DVDs. There must be inspiring films like the Harry Potter series for the young now too. We have to draw on all our sources of inspiration now in dangerous times. To those who enjoyed watching the John Adams series, McCullough’s book that it was made from is impossible to put down, far more engrossing and exciting than the film version. Aside from watching news on Fox, I too love to see the old classical films available on Netflix, such as “Battle Cry,” a film about Marine recruits entering as kids and growing into men by way of military training and learning via their mistakes to truly love the women in their lives. Inspiration is at least as important for life as food, shelter, and money. Luckily we’ve preserved endless alternatives.

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:28 am 214. Gringo:

177. Dblade:

And you wonder why no one makes pop culture for conservatives, when you all retreat from it?

If I do not like a product, cultural or otherwise, my not purchasing it is in a sense my voting a NO on that product. There is a message being sent: Hollywood and others are apparently not getting the message.

It has been observed that movies with more traditional/conservative aspects have done better at the box office than those with an “edgier” or more politically correct or more leftist approach. That news has not apparently reached movie makers, who continue to churn out the same dreck.

How is someone who is openly conservative treated in Hollywood? From what I have read, like a pariah.

In conclusion, while withdrawal may be a reason, when conservatives “engage” Hollywood culture, the results are not all that good.

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:35 am 215. Andrew Burton:

If Marx was alive now he might say of America, “Televised sports are the opiate of the masses.”

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:52 am 216. Dirtt:

You obviously echo an element of the new counter-culture – antagonists in the New Cold War – that perhaps is really not that sad at all.

Littering. Fighting for parking. Jack-rabbit starts to gain pole position at the next red light. THE RAT RACE!

I tend to disagree with the contention that a particular unsavory aspect of popular culture was absent ‘back in the day.’ It just seems that they went out of their way to hide it. Now it seems that, not only do they go out of their way to exploit it, they flaunt it and find merit in shoving it down our throats. And what they shovel isn’t worth chickens**t.

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:03 am 217. MarkD:

We get what we buy.

I’m finishing Jeffrey Archer’s book about Mallory’s attempt at Everest, which is far better than any recent movie. Hollywood is going to go bust if they are looking for my money.

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:03 am 218. NC Mountain Girl:

I still watch some sporting events, but otherwise my path over the last 15 years has been similar to that of the author.

I lost interest in movies when it seemed that all the leading men looked like they could pass convincingly in drag.

Someone recommended Troy as a recent movie worth watching. Not in my opinion. Without the gods, many elements of the story make little sense, such as why Helen would run away with the feckless Paris. Even more unforgivable was how the story was rewritten in regards to Agamemnon and Menelaus to fit the dictates of modern Hollywood storytelling. That was the worse bit of butchery since Hollywood rewrote Tolstoy so that Anna and Vronsky could live happily ever after.

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:05 am 219. Andrew burton:

This quote from the opening sequence of the movie Serenity (one of the very few I’ve seen recently, and then only because Glenn Reynolds suggested it) seems to be the direction the USA is heading:

“So with so many social and medical advancements we can bring to the Independents, why would they fight so hard against us ?” And the spooky, funny little girl, genius River Tam, gives the child’s answer, no less right for being blunt: “We meddle. People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think. Don’t run, don’t walk. We’re in their homes, and in their heads, and we haven’t the right. We’re meddlesome.”

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:08 am 220. Tina:

My husband and I did all the above, like you. Don’t need what they have to offer. Don’t want any of it.

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:10 am 221. HARRY:

Gerhard Weinberg “A World at Arms” is the best of the hundreds of books I havce read on WWII.
I have also just re-read Rick Atkinson’s “An Army at Dawn” and “The Day of Battle”, the first two books of the Liberation Trilogy. They are superb, particularly when he writes about the war in Italy and combat among the classical and Renaissance cultural icons. Atkinsons uses similes such as “the stars threw down their spears” to describe the early morning before an offensive. Inspired.

I must say something in defense of Leonardo Di Caprio, his portrayal of Howard Hughes in “The Aviator” was very good. He has the ability to move beyond his origins and become an actor as good as anyone in the 1930’s or 40’s.

And Eastwoods “Grand Torino” is worth a column all its own.

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:11 am 222. Sirius33:

VDH – you seem to have struck a chord with your audience. I dare say that many of us who enjoy your writings, both online and your published work, have slowly rejected pop culture and “cling” to the more interesting diversions still available. My television viewing is almost exclusively Discovery Channel, Nat’lGeo, Travel and the like. Musical enjoyment is firmly rooted in my younger years (indeed I am taking my sons to see Steely Dan in a few weeks), and to the Strathmore Music Center for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Hollywood? Well…except for Slumdog Millionaire, which I recommend without reservation, we’ve seen “Inglorious Basterds” and little else…but then who can refuse a good Nazi-killin’ film? Instead, I’ve been working my way through the classics of the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s via Netflix….one of the web’s great inventions.

Best regards

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:18 am 223. Ever smiling and gentle on my mind:

The best music I have purchased from an artist still breathing lately is “Do You Get the Blues” by Jimmie Vaughan, and I recommend every song on the album. The last time we were in Austin we stood in line outside of a nightclub near 6th Street and had every intention to go listen to him play live, but it started raining and we did not have an umbrella so we ran into a little bar next door had some wine and rocked out to his music. He is worth the trouble, and his brother was worth the “TROUBLE” in his day too, his brother Stevie Ray. If you hate the new sounds and new artists like I do and you love old blues songs, listen to this man’s songs, because you will not be disappointed. I love his music, because he has the saxophones and flutes in many of the songs. I love that old sound, and it makes me happy and takes my mind off what is happening in the world today.

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:19 am 224. Whistling Dixie:

Once read books are a great source of comfort and answers today. When the clouds came last November I searched the bookcase for something with comparable situational appeal. The three volumes of Shelby Foote’s Civil War focussed my attention, not from the pure military tactics of the first reading but the human aspect it generously provided. I took many new and moving examples of personal courage from the reread and one small vin-yet stays with me. Upon JEB Stuart’s very tardy return to the Getysburg field of battle, R.E.Lee’s response was not to rave and condemn his brave cavalry general but softly asked “Help me fight these people”.

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:50 am 225. interesting times:

good post doc.

Removing oneself from the media culture isnt limited to the over 50 crowd.

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:54 am 226. tobytylersf:

Fascinating; now I no longer feel so alone! I too no longer watch television, haven’t for years, and my ipod is filled with either classical music or big band jazz (Fletcher Henderson is my biggest favorite). As for DVDs, I rarely watch anything made after 1948, to tell the truth. WC Fields, the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton are funnier than any of the snarky new people in movies today. Do people actually find a comedy about someone getting their genitalia caught in their zipper funnier than, say, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in My Favorite Wife? What does that say about their sense of humor, I wonder.

As for “realism”, what modern director even comes close to John Ford? There was a reason they called it the Golden Age of Hollywood. The beauty of technology is that all of those fantastic movies are easily available on DVD, and can be watched on big-screen home TVs. Who needs the cinemaplex?

Watching modern culture makes me feel lost, frankly. I simply don’t understand the thinking that produces the ideas espoused in modern movies. As for modern music: how sad is it that we now have music that people can sing while they’re angry? Try singing Whistle While You Work while you’re angry — you simply can’t! Modern music seems to reflect an entire generation of people perpetually in a snit, whining about how unfair everything is.

No wonder so many of us choose to simply leave it behind. Great article, as per usual!

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:03 am 227. Sotos:

I echo most of your sentiments, the culture has degraded. Formulaic media is more and more common, and your changes in behavior mimics mine. There are good things out there, however: the Giants Packers playoff of 2 years ago was magnificent, as was the recent run of the Twins

A lot depends on what you mean popular culture. While the traditional distribution channels seem monolithic, and God alone knows the biases of the chattering class is, all is not as it appears. As one of your commenters noted, there are now MANY popular cultures – technology allows one to pick and choose in a way that never was possible before. I think we may be looking at the death of a common culture, or at least the fragmentation into many connected subcultures. What is also true, however, is that the act of picking and choosing takes time and effort and as I get older it is often more effort than it is worth. This is the problem of information mechanics – the cost of handling the almost infinite data available. See the Coase theorem.

I grew up in an Opera House(father and maternal grandfather), my mother at the age of 94 has had a SAG AFTRA Equity cards of one sort or another for 77 years, etc. so please trust me that there has ALWAYS been a lot of crap out there. There are four things to consider, however.

1. In the past there were limited distribution channels: a lot less was produced and what was produced went under greater scrutiny. The entire works of Shakespeare wouldn’t fill one network’s prime time season, much less that of 20+ cable stations. A lot of stuff stunk, but the cost of failure was often immediate and devastating. Now the enormous bandwidth available to be filled dictates that what is produced is cheap, plentiful, and to a common denominator that at least gets an economic audience immediately. This promotes a race to the bottom – excused as edginess or camp – and every time we think we have hit rock bottom it seems it is just another ledge. The dynamic driving this is fear: Sam Goldwyn’s old line that “Nobody knows nothing” is truer than ever: the effects of technology are amazing. Due to internet distribution the Porn Industry has probably shrunk by 30-50% with the collapse of DVD sales, the music business is in the same boat, and everyone else is terrified. A lot of the verbal, and ideological sturm und drang from our various “betters” is really fear

2. The past seems better than it was because memory edits out the bad and mediocre. I once had a subscription to a “lost” ancient music society. After two seasons it was quite apparent why most of the works had been forgotten. A more modern example would be the Hollywood B movies – they also had a pipeline problem. There product was often terrible, and sometimes as bizarre as anything produced today (e.g. Freaks), though not as obscene or scatological.
We also forget that the past had huge structural upheavals: the current # of productions on Broadway is about 5% of what existed in 1928.

3. Seen from an economic perspective, entertainment reflects the tastes of the people who pay to see it. Generally this does not include anyone over 50. This is not to minimize the cultural issues so many have pointed to, but to consider that as the audience for most entertainment, indeed much consumer spending, has gotten younger and younger, the content has reflected and catered (pandered?) to it. As street life, or gutter life has been dramatized, so has culture from the large distributors and producers of content, particularly music. The battle between the street and middle class culture is a long one: see Ellison’s The Invisible Man. Up until now this has been the safe way to go: to be fashionably tough, revolutionary, radical and stinking rich is fun! More caviar, Comrades?

4. Quality sometimes will out, many have listed movies such as the latest Batman series and others that have been enormous hits. As the divorced father of a now 12 year old I have been to many films that I would rather not go to, but have been very surprised when seen through the eyes of a child how good a lot of these films are. Ratatouille and to a lesser extent WallE were about as perfectly structured and executed as I have seen recently. Even the Game Plan – a formulaic exercise if ever there was one, is amazingly effective to young eyes.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:04 am 228. MisterH:

Yes that feeling is what happens to most people when you reach the age of 50, though I began to find most popular culture pretty loathsome by the time I hit 45.

It’s like that episode in the Simpsons where grandpa Simpson is at a city council meeting and is given the opportunity to speak his mind. He stands and says,

“I’m an old man….and I don’t like anything but Matlock!”

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:12 am 229. even more interesting time:

Its also in the 20 and 30 something crowd.

I dropped out around 8 years ago when the violence, sex and nihilism in media and pop culture just finally totally alienated me once and for all.

How many sex or explosions or violence scenes can a person see before it all just gets.. really boring.

My wife and I have a TV in our home for childrens DVDs only. Barney, blues clues etc. childrens Dvds that impart good manners and behavior. Elmo DVDs had to go due to street language and coarseness (which says something).

Started reading real classics: Torah with Rashi commentary, Talmud. Works of a truely timeless and spiritual nature and quality. this in turn lead to deep reflection and connection to the creator.

On a seperate note, also started reading Paul Johnson, Samuel Huntington and others. currently reading A short history of Byzantium by Norwich.

I follow current events via the internet via sites I decide and I am probably better informed that many who watch TV and movies.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:15 am 230. Cory:

How can you put Gary Sinese in the same sentence with Matt Damon?

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:23 am 231. Wayne Lusvardi:

I have paralleled the experience of VDH and the many commenters above. Let me offer an observation: what we are experiencing is the secularization of everything – including baseball and sports. The sociologist David Martin calls this the secularization of secularism. Even liberals that hate institutional religion lament the decline of baseball and other institutions. But you can’t have it both ways. The decline, or cultural co-optation, of religion is a canary in the mine to what is going on. For a cultural contrarian trend read Hunter Baker’s book The End of Secularism.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:32 am 232. JohnB:

Spooky. A few hundred good people experiencing the same thing. I could never put a proper title to it. A “Cultural Dropout.” I like it. I identify with it. It’s not that I don’t care, I liked my World Series, Super Bowl, movie premiers. I just don’t like being manipulated by the hype and missing these events doesn’t seem to bother me anymore. I guess I went out and got a life. I appreciate my wife more, I care about my family, my friends. I live life, spend my time on things that matter, and don’t worry about missing some invented or contrived “thing.” Thank you for giving a voice to this experience.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:34 am 233. David N. Narr:

“Hey hey ho ho Western Civ has got to go.” Well, you got your wish.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:35 am 234. Inrptrn:

205. Dblade:

they already isolate themselves and produce reams of second-rate, bland crap.”

Look in the mirror. Pop culture is selling and we aren’t buying.

We will drop the floor out of this culture just like commies did decades ago.

Good riddance.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:40 am 235. EscapeVelocity:

This has to do with the success of the Leftwing Culture War since the 60s which is anathema to Western Civilization.

My hope is that the reaction to Islam will finally reawaken Western Confidence and bring back the fading civilization that the vultures are feeding upon.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:40 am 236. Scherie:

I agree 100% with Dr. Hanson. I too have dropped out of popular culture. And I’m only 31 years old. I’m so sick of crudity of our culture. I do not listen to local radio or read local newspapers. Forget about local television news. I can’t stand it. It’s anti-intellecutal in its content. It appeals to the lowest common denominator.

I’ve always felt that I was separate from the culture at large. Granted I still enjoy sports, particularly basketball because at least achievement is expected. Mediocracy is becoming the norm. Our culture is so dead right now. John and Kate Plus 8 get more media attention than an approaching economic crisis that may be worse than the Great Depression!

I follow what Dr. Hanson does; the public library is my friend. I go there to read books, since that is my favorite hobby anyway. Maybe we will be the only ones who saves civilization by maintaining our intellectual curiosity; since we are immune to the dumbed down culture!!!???

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:44 am 237. Martygus:

I thought I was “out of the mainstream” when I stopped watching TV (1 hr. of Fox news when I get home from work, little else). The only movie I’ve seen in 2009 is Gran Torino, on DVD. I have a wonderful collection of VHS tapes, everything from “GWTW” to “Harvey”, bought for $1 or less at yard sales.
I love to read, but the newest “best sellers” are rarely sold to me. I don’t listen to music on the radio any more, except for some country–which at least makes sense. My favorite “new” authors are Jack Higgins and Tony Hillerman.
I donate to the local Salvation Army, Wounded Warrier Project, and a local small-town youth center.
What’s really odd is that my 40′ish children are pretty much doing the same thing–even the liberal ones in Southern California. They were steeped in “Hollywood chic” until they had a baby, and suddely confined liberal to only their politics, while becoming ultra-conservative in their behavior. They raise their child sans day care, establish bedtimes, mealtimes, acceptable behavior for their 2-yr-old, cook their own meals and eat together regularly at a dinner table, plant a garden, generally live much the way I did as a child 60 years ago, with the addition of running water, electricity, automatic washer, TV (not much) and internet.
In Yuba-Sutter,CA, there are more cultural dropouts than anything else, even Republicans, and there are lots of those.

Oct 19, 2009 - 12:01 pm 238. victor:

Gee whiz. Generalize much? Unless this article was intended to be an imitation of Dana Carvey’s “Grumpy Old Man” sketch from the SNL of days gone by (in which case, it was spot on).

I would argue, though, that VDH never really had much pop culture cred (or even appreciation for pop culture to begin with) so his “confession” that he’s “dropped-out” is not particularly noteworthy.

Oct 19, 2009 - 12:17 pm 239. paul_unalaska:

Excellent piece, Professor.

In reference to your ‘Thin Veneer’ portion, I too pick up trash to/from locations. Seeing garbage on paths, along roadways, etc., is frustrating. I’m by no means an eccentric enviro but seeing folks stepping on and through garbage is unnerving. Especially if a trash bin is within reasonable distance.

As for music and movies, I too tire of the remake, err, it’s now titled, ‘tribute’. Creativity and novel ideas has gone way of the dodo.

Deep Purple’s ‘Deep Purple’ album is more rock than anything put out nowadays. 1971-1979 boasts of some incredible rock, metal genre music. Strange, considering the last 3 1/2 years of the 70’s consisted of disco as well. note: The live version of Deep Purple’s ‘Black Night’ is still an incredible piece in my book.

Movies, television – waste of time. Haven’t had cable in nearly 5 years. hulu.com has ‘The Office’ and some cooking programs I watch for ideas. I recently found ‘Land of the Giants’ on hulu as well!

Movies, I research Sundance, Indie releases.

Books, I too look at the classics. Somerset Maugham, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, etc.,

Again, fun piece. Thanks, Doc

Oct 19, 2009 - 12:19 pm 240. Ron Kean:

200. quesnay

You have a good point. Rough stuff on a woman I admire.

Oct 19, 2009 - 12:22 pm 241. Common Sense:

I too have dropped a lot of the current culture. I stopped watching any TV years ago after the last Star Trek Voyager episode aired. I did watch 24 for 2 seasons because my son asked me to watch with him, but stopped after the story lines because ridiculous.

The last movie we saw as a family was Indiana Jones 4, what a disappointment. My daughter and I saw The Duchess which I highly recommend. Keira Knightly is an excellent actress and the movie is a faithful representation of the time period. We also watched Wolverine on DVD a couple of weeks ago. I do like the X-Men movies and Hugh Jackman especially. He and Gerard Butler are my favorite actors.

I quit listening to new rock music after the 80s. I am subjected to it because I have teens, but I still haven’t found a group I really like. 5 for Fighting is OK. My husband listens to classic rock and classical, mostly Mozart and Haydn. My daughter and I love tenors and some other classical cross-over music – Vittorio Grigolo, Mario Frangoulis, Jonathan Ansell, G4, Sissel, Amici, David Garrett, Bond, etc. The Brits produce a lot of the music we like to listen to. In fact, I listen to their classical music radio station online – Classic FM. Good music is actually popular there. My daughter is also a big musical theater fan, but even that is degrading with the advent of garbage like Spring Awakening.

For books, I like the historical thrillers from Dan Brown and Steve Berry and historical fiction. I also enjoy non-fiction history, history being my favorite subject. The Revolutionary War and it’s characters are my favorite time period and I’ve read biographies of Ben Franklin, George Washington, Martha Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and more. Even the lesser of those long-ago statesmen was 10 time better than anyone we have today. We are definitely the worse off for the lack of a classical education. Obama is a good example of what the Ivy League has become.

I no longer subscribe to a newspaper after the Rocky Mountain News went out of business. I get all of my news online where I can avoid the Obamabots and the likes of Keith Olbermann.

Most of our free time is spent with our teens activities. Our lives are full of marching band competitions, choir and jazz performances, and our daughter’s ballet.

We had a rare quiet evening last night with the TV off. My daughter was reading a novel, she’s quite the bookworm, and my son was reading American Heroes by Oliver North. He doesn’t have much time for recreational reading, but when he does have time, he really enjoys non-fiction stories of real American heroes. If only they would make those stories into movies.

We followed that with a few rounds of a board game, a much more worthwhile use of our time than TV.

Oct 19, 2009 - 12:50 pm 242. Dark Eden:

#145. I told a colleague that I should have been born in 1872, rather than 1972 – it seems I am not alone. Although I am only 37, I sometimes feel much older.

Interesting. I’m the same age, and I’ve done the same ‘withdrawal’ from popular culture as many of the others on this thread, but in slightly different ways. I’m a bisexual Pagan and I run my own small cottage business making virtual goods in the online world of Second Life. I’m far from a prude, a luddite, or a crazy evangelical (I’m not even Christian!).

I used to be an avid consumer of the popular culture, especially back in the era of the Cosby Show and Suicide Slot. Over the years, I’ve seen the same things as everyone else here. Popular culture, entertainment, hollywood, hell even my much beloved geek-friendly comic books have become soulless PC monstrosities.

I realized it around the time Fight Club came out. I’d seen a string of movies like it: American Beauty, Falling Down, etc etc, they all kind of blur together. The point I think was to get me to rebel against suburban traditional living, but all the movies seemed so empty. All the characters started out in a surburban/urban life that was unrecognizable to me, living ugly, isolated lives that said volumes about their creators more than what the creators were attempting to criticize. When these ugly characters tried to fill this gnawing emptiness with something (street fighting in Fight Club, mindless vigilantism in Falling Down, who knows what in American Beauty) it came off as so alien and forced. What was missing was obvious. Family. Religion. Spirituality. Community. Dare I say pride in your country and your fellow Americans? All the amazing and beautiful things that happen every day in the real America.

Since then I haven’t been able to watch most movies or TV shows without seeing the blatant and honestly quite pathetic attempts to manipulate me to see things through Hollywood Eyes.

Since I’m a massive geek, I retreated into video games, many of which have surprisingly solid conservative messages, and Japanese anime/manga. The Japanese stuff is… odd… even by my standards, but it doesn’t have that bizarre Hollywood… emptiness. Despite the completely different culture, format, etc, anime and video games can reach me on a very human level and move me emotionally, something Hollywood is rarely capable of anymore.

So TLDR is that I don’t think you can pass this off as frumpy traditionalism, or any of the usual left wing stereotypes. I don’t fit any of those (and most of the rest of you don’t either but its harder to pin on me), and yet I see the exact same thing everyone else is talking about. The problem isn’t with conservative viewers but Hollywood producers.

Oct 19, 2009 - 12:53 pm 243. Robert Winkler Burke:

Doctor Hanson,

Here’s something I put together as a fan of John Ford’s Calvary Trilogy films starring John Wayne. Imagine Victor McLagen, the Irish pugilist, delivering this in his thick brogue..

We came o’er the mountains,
We came across the plain,
Back in Eighteen-eighty,
To be born again!

We came to a wild West,
The land of stories told!
We came to raise up families,
To grow rich and old!

Every man among us,
Was wholesome: a man,
Soft of heart, strong of head,
Able to take a stand.

We had repeatin’ rifles,
Each a revolver gun,
A knife or two about himself,
Ready for night or sun.

Most all made heaven,
A hundred years ago,
Now we see our progeny,
When lookin’ down below.

Not one man has rifle,
Not one a holstered gun,
Nor even knife in pocket,
Each not so great grandson…

Maybe something in a safe,
Where it can’t be employed,
In the out and about,
Where life is enjoyed!

We see from heaven in the soul,
What is wrong with man,
His head is soft, heart: hard,
He can’t say: No to ma’am.

His approval comes not,
From things of true worth,
He adopts his queen’s fear,
A man: a man from birth!

There ought to be a law,
Against gelding so thorough,
The tools we carried then,
Made character grow and grow!

Continued at http://www.inthatdayteachings.com.

Oct 19, 2009 - 1:04 pm 244. IndependentDem:

Excellent essay on the coarsening of our culture, and you truly have touched a nerve. I agree with you pretty much all of it, but I have a suggestion regarding sports. Try live Minor League baseball or small-college basketball. I am not a sports fan, but they are great fun.

And, I wonder; has anyone else noticed that, even when the general poster on this thread has a disagreement with VDH (or any other columnist, for that matter), they are still generally respectful? But, when Moho, David S, biblio44 and quesnay disagree (on anything, really), they are nasty and try to destroy. No doubt, not seeing this in themselves, they’ll come after me, but perhaps this can be VDH’s entire column summed up.

Oct 19, 2009 - 1:18 pm 245. Mo:

Unfortunatley, I’d have to disagree here. We need to know what’s going on in pop culture, otherwise how are we going to fight it? And how are we going to communicate with people?

Sure, most of it is trash. But there are still some pretty good shows and movies available like Lost, BSG, the LOTR films. (Though they are a few years old now.) The Harry Potter books and films were not Shakespeare, but were good entertainment and had a strong, positive storyline.

Current music doesn’t interest me. But then, it never did! I am 41 and grew up on music that was already old by the time I discovered it – all the usual “oldies” like Elvis and the Beatles, classic country like Johnny Cash and Emmylou Harris, etc. (Tho’ Emmylou Harris is still going strong.)

So it’s not all worthless. My view is that we need to find the gold amongst the crap, and be somewhat knowledgeable so that we can speak to people.

Otherwise, we’re just talking to ourselves and not making much of an impact on a culture that desperately needs it.

Oct 19, 2009 - 1:41 pm 246. Advocate, Devils:

I must respectfully disagree. While true that much of what comes out of Hollywood is unpalatable it is also true that Hollywood sometimes slips up and creates something excellent. It’s foolish to throw out the good with the bad. I can name a dozen good movies in just the last five years, and here are some of them.

Lord of the Rings, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
Ironman, The Dark Knight, Up!
The Great Debaters, Walk the Line
Secondhand Lions, The Pursuit of Happyness
Master and Commander, The Chronicles of Narnia
United 93, Gran Torino, National Treasure
World Trade Center (Nicholas Cage)and Coach Carter

As much as I admire VDH, I can’t agree on this. Hollywood has always been a cesspool and isn’t much different morally now than it was 50 years ago.

Oct 19, 2009 - 1:41 pm 247. Nahanni:

I suspect that there are millions more just like us, professor.

All one has to do to see proof of that is look at huge decline the reader/viewer/ad revenue/ticket sales to see that.

More importantly it is just another indication that the US has developed it’s own version of Canada’s “two solitudes” over the last decade. At the rate the “bleu state” leftists are pushing things there may soon come a time when we see our own version of the 1995 Quebec Referendum.

Oct 19, 2009 - 1:57 pm 248. SoberHorseThief:

What an outpouring! Yes, if not for some dumb cooking and Discovery shows, MLB and the NFL, and Turner Classic Movies, I’d dump the TV. I just turned 45; I realize that around 25 the culture was stuck in stupid and I was getting past it. Sure, it had been stupid, but when I was under 25 it was MY stupid; now it was the new kids’ stupid. Anyway, I am absolutely certain it has gotten stupider, that this can be proved, and it is not just a function of cranky middle age.

Oct 19, 2009 - 2:07 pm 249. Bugs:

Sorry, Vic. If you’re blogging on the Internet you ARE part of the culture – not a dropout.

Oct 19, 2009 - 2:19 pm 250. ic:

Go Youtube, man, go Youtube.

Watch Robert Donat’s Good Bye Mr. Chips, Vacation from Marriage. Deborah Kerr’s Edward, My Son, William Holden’s Golden Boy,… Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Olivia deHavilland, Joan Fontaine, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, Irene Dunne…

Let’s face it they don’t have talented people in Hollywood any more. They have self absorbed big mouths who don’t know what the heck they are doing, on and off screen.

While you are at it, watch Catus Flower. Goldie Hawn’s first lead role.

Oct 19, 2009 - 2:28 pm 251. Anonymous:

Yes, Western Civilization has to quit trying to be all things to all Non-Western Peoples. It needs to celebrate itself, because no one else is going to do it. They, guided by the Western Left want to tear it down and destroy it and rebuild something in its place.

Being pro Western is now Counter Culture. The Western Left won the culture war of the last 40 years….but the pushback is coming.

Oct 19, 2009 - 2:30 pm 252. EscapeVelocity:

Yes, Western Civilization has to quit trying to be all things to all Non-Western Peoples. It needs to celebrate itself, because no one else is going to do it. They, guided by the Western Left want to tear it down and destroy it and rebuild something in its place.

Being pro Western is now Counter Culture. The Western Left won the culture war of the last 40 years….but the pushback is coming. The re-birth, a new awakening.

Oct 19, 2009 - 2:30 pm 253. Thought Criminal:

Yes, the popular culture being pushed upon us is a wasteland of banality. While I can relate to all of my fellow travelers in their refutation of it and their need to get away I just don’t think it’s in our best interest to simply walk away. Of course, don’t consume their trash, but…

I hear a lot of hand-wringing but not a lot of “Let’s smash those bastards to bits! For the love of God, this is our country and they can’t have it!” WE need to fight the leftists and marxists for control of our culture! WE need to dictate the terms on which pop culture lives and dies. WE have the numbers. WE have the moral high-ground.

Are you with me?

Oct 19, 2009 - 2:55 pm 254. Gylippus:

44. Robert Curry:

America is a land of cultural giants. Its greatest genius is the ability to unleash human potential via social and organizational flexibility, and by finely balancing individual self-interest with patriotism (see VDH’s CARNAGE AND CULTURE). For me therefore, America’s greatest contributions so far have been in the realm of pragmatic political philosophy, technological invention (we walked on the moon!!), and the dissemination of wealth and freedom.

Having said that, I could easily add Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe to my list. The brilliant painter Andrew Wyeth too. Many great American Sci-Fi writers broke new ground (Heinlein, Herbert and Nive/Pournelle remain favorites of mine). And the list of great American actors, directors & composers is long.

It is a tall order to rival the stellar icons of ancient Greek literature, the artists of the Renaissance, or the composers of the German baroque era. But we are a young nation still, and God willing (and the current Leftist push to subvert democracy and free-markets notwithstanding), I believe that our best days, cultural and otherwise, still lie before us.

Oct 19, 2009 - 2:55 pm 255. Mary:

Oh, Doctor – you’re forgetting “300″

Come now – if you really don’t own it, then tell me an address that I can mail it to you for Christmas.

Love,

Mary

Oct 19, 2009 - 2:57 pm 256. anonymous:

Thanks for giving voice to my experience, too. I’ve been feeling simply alienated for such a long time — surrounded friends, neighbors, co-workers who find their entertainment at casinos and through video games, network TV, and insipid novels.

I don’t know if anyone has mentioned that all of these have had the result of leaching all the individuality out of the population, so we travel in a world where everyone dresses alike, repeats the same worn jokes and catch phrases, and has the same take on current events/sports/whatever that was served up today through the mass media. Everyone seems to dream of going to ‘Vegas’ to see slick ‘entertainment’ that just seems cynical and deadening to me. Like you and other commenters, I find that I’ve tuned out and choosen classic DVDs, good books, and the joys of music from the past instead. But it’s a lonely road. Perhaps all of us drop-outs could meet at the local coffee shop for a good conversation.

Oct 19, 2009 - 2:59 pm 257. Celebrim:

I’m not sure that there is anyone who is more inclined to agree with the vapidness of Hollywood culture than me, but your rant sounds more like simple nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ than any real inditement of the emptiness, crassness, and insipidness of current popular culture.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:06 pm 258. Jane:

Spot on as always Dr Hanson.

I gave up CNN in 1991, Time Magazine about the same time, Sixty Minutes a few years later, network news long, long before that. I haven’t watched a program other than sports on network tv in so long I cannot tell you what it might have been. I have one 21″ tube tv, no DVD player. I have seen maybe 4 movies in the last 10 years. My music collection lacks much more than a half dozen CDs made since the 1990s. I am just this year tho giving up the NFL and making a serious attempt to boycott the NYT (I live in NJ). I’ve never read Grisham or any of those other types of authors (what are their names?).

We are surrounded by inanity – unfunny comedy, unserious and untruthful news, overwrought drama. Arrogance and selfishness abound. All deeply unattractive to me anyway.

I am 46.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:10 pm 259. weewilly:

only 32 myself like zach, and have been “receding” or “egressing” from popular culture since i was 28 or so, only listen to classical music, only dvds i watch are operas, only tv i watch is tcm and fox news(quite totally for a year or so but have moderated my anti-tv stance somewhat), haven’t seen many “new” movies, and those i have only disgust me (eg: crystal skull/starwars1-3), mostly spend my evenings with books written 200+ years ago(currently reading a delightful prose translation of ariosto’s orlando furioso published by oxford classics) as everything (music/literature) from the “romantic” period forward (excluding wagner and some chopin) seems to merely regurgitate and sensationalize things done a thousand times before. sorry to rant like this, but this(judging from the comments) seems like a trend among conservatives lately.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:11 pm 260. david foster:

One thing that is very strange and interesting: the defacto alliance between academics, on the one hand, and entertainers–a high % of are very far from intellectuality in any sense–on the other.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:11 pm 261. Scott:

Dear Victor:

Yep, you’ve reached old.

I’m getting there (now 40), but yeah, the pop culture isn’t quite the mess that you describe.

Just one example: You checked out of the NFL in FREAKING 1980?

The rest of commenters on this thread; just think about that.

John Elway is spinning — well, he’s spinning to a first down to shock the 2-touchdown favorite Green Bay Packers …

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:13 pm 262. Alex:

YES!!!! Count me in the same group. I’ve run into others as well. Lots of people watch older movies. I prefer Japanese movies and anime.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:14 pm 263. DirtCrashr:

Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop Away – It’s the 60’s antidote, and I went to UC Santa Cruz too (’81)…

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:16 pm 264. James Johnson:

I read Dickens, early 20th century history and books on photgraphy. Springsteen is no better than the rest.

And I’m still several years away from AARP eligibility.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:20 pm 265. tioedong:

One of the “side effects” of all of this is a negative stereotype of America overseas.

There is literally no good shows about “normal” America here in the Philippines” lots of violence and sexually explicit sexual gyrations (especially bad: Much of these are portrayed by black actors or singers).

One exception: “reality” shows like Storm stories or Nat Geo/Discovery channel’s episodes on blue collar workers and those who risk their lives rescuing people…

Oh yes: and then there is the “news”.
CNN International has few US accents, and is anti American…BBC is a bit better, but clueless in insight.
Although the press here mimics the NYT and loves Obama, the local coverage on his Peace prize is muted…maybe it’s the typhoons, but I don’t think so..

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:22 pm 266. J.E. Dyer:

Just tell me you never watched Seinfeld or Friends, Professor, and you’ll have a hat trick.

Not that I especially objected to those series, but series TV has just been so inane and not worth the time for so many years. I did keep up with Star Trek for a long time.

In some ways it makes one feel out of touch, but it’s really not very important, I’ve found, to know what happened on the latest episode of Family Guy. What turns out to actually be FUNNY is the “funniest home video” series. (Today’s pop series, however, will be knee-slappers in 20 years when their of-the-moment humor references are all outdated.)

The only thing I don’t know from not watching the alphabet network news shows is what the news-talkers looked like when they were speaking. Their take on everything is so predictable I could write it for them in my sleep, and the content of the news I can get elsewhere.

In print media, Paul Krugman should really just pay me to string left-wing bromides together for his column, and get on with whatever he likes to do for leisure activities. Why waste his own valuable time?

Maybe it’s time to write about the evils of banality. Pop culture (or what uber-righty R. Emmet Tyrell calls the “kultursmog”) is just so banal today. I’d include some aspects of sports in that, but I do cling — and not bitterly — to my beloved teams, and the opportunity to see them on TV.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:26 pm 267. Doug Santo:

Not perfect, but a pretty good description of me.

One thing I would nit-pick. You forget about Vin Scully, the long time broadcaster for the Dodgers. I think he started with the Dodgers in 1958 and is still going. He is the best. I love to listen to his broadcasts. Chick Hearn, the long time announcer for the Lakers, was a close second to Scully, untill Hearn’s recent death.

Anyway, Nice piece.

Doug Santo
Pasadena, CA

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:28 pm 268. Koblog:

I have an excellent home theater system. Yet walking through my local video store I find nothing worth watching — DVD or Blu-ray — and walk out empty handed.

The politically correct language on episodic TV makes me ill. I enjoy canceling such shows from my DVR listing, knowing it’s just a matter of time before the networks cancels it in actuality.

I darken a movie theater only when given tickets as gifts, and regret the waste of time, usually, after enduring more PC commercials and public announcements.

And now the NFL has announced it no longer wants me as a viewer because it does not like my divisive views, but I must admit increasing guilt for wasting time on artificial excitement built of special effects and stirring music that is forgotten before the day is out. Couldn’t tell you who won the Super Bowl last year…and I watched it…for the commercials.

So, goodbye to all.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:30 pm 269. Bill Peschel:

We dropped our cable subscription when our TV broke, somewhere around the mid-1990s. We acquired a friend’s model a few years later, but have no interest in signing up.

So we’ve turned to our DVD player to watch whatever we want to watch (and, yes, we have see a bit of “Desperate Housewives,” “Lost” and “The Simpsons” — the latter as they release the box sets). We watch what interests us, and a few episodes of “Housewives” and “24″ convinced us it wouldn’t be worth the time spent.

We go out about one a year to the movies, but only when there’s something we’ve wanted to see.

As for music, my wife loves techno (Daft Punk, Joi, Aphex Twin, etc.) and I pick up stuff off the internet or rent from the library (I must confess to an attraction to Lily Allen), but we’ve gone back to Beatles and ’80s music (the ’90s box set from Rhino has some good tracks, but mingled with rappiers, Divinyls “I Touch Myself” and “Removeable Penis” which is not playable with children around, even if I wanted to hear them).

Indeed, the mid-90s marks an ideal dividing line between music I’d leave the radio on for and music I can’t get fast enough away from.

The children get to see some television at their friends out and at grandmas. What little I’ve seen only reinforces my belief that there’s very little worth seeing, particularly on the networks.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:33 pm 270. Ed Steadham:

VDH,

I highly recommend you make one exception to your otherwise sensible decision to avoid movies. Rent “The Lives of Others,” a German production set in East Germany in the early 1980s. An astonishing look at the spiritual costs communism took on people. Especially timely seeing as we are coming up on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And don’t take my word for it. The National Review and Weekly Standard both lauded it.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:35 pm 271. K:

An excellent essay and obviously you aren’t alone. I am in the same boat, but I put it down to being a fairly analytical person who’s been getting the “chalky undertaste” in the culture for more than a decade.

My question is this: In what is supposedly a free market economy, why are there no entrepreneurs willing to step up and fill the culture void? Clearly there’s a market for it. I’d say the answer is that the left has so successfully marched through the academic and art institutions that the talent to make successful films has been totally co-opted. If this is, in fact the case, then the only hope lies in taking back those institutions. At least to make them truly “multicultural” in terms of ideas and philosophies, instead of their present monocultural state.

Or we can just continue to whine on the internet how few new movies there are to watch, these days.

Action. Action now.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:35 pm 272. myth buster:

It took until 242 for someone to mention any form of comic books? Wow. Honestly, the stuff I get in my Shonen Jump Monthly is a lot better than most stuff on TV. I still watch sports, although I spend most of the year out of market. Other than that, I watch very little TV, save for Fox News.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:37 pm 273. Publius:

Largely agree – and I’m only 38.

Movies are my one cultural touchstone – I still see dozens per year. But music, sports, TV (got rid of it 12 years ago)- I don’t enjoy them. It either bores, annoys, or outrages me.

And I find myself instinctively being more courteous and gentlemanly.

It’d be great to have a common popular culture again . . . but crassness and political correctness has all but killed that possibility.

The great benefit? The chance to dig into the past for gems of culture – and the search for overlooked modern gems (like college rugby)

Life always has its options.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:40 pm 274. glenmore:

remind me not to call you as a lifeline when i get on “who wants to be a millionaire?”.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:41 pm 275. H Tuttle:

I credit 9/11 with the final impetus for the start of my “dropping out” of popular culture as I finally put childish things away and set my nose to the grindstone at work digesting the forces of history at work around me. That process has only accelerated in the past few years and today I keep a mere tie in – primarily only to keep tabs on my daughters’ interests (they being 12 and 10). The plus side is I have more time for the great works of western civilization, the downside is I grow increasing pessimist – or perhaps realistic – about our collective fate.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:45 pm 276. Carolyn McLaughlin:

Victor, try finding and watching a 1961 movie with Frank Sinatra and Spencer Tracy called THE DEVIL AT 4 O’CLOCK. I found it for 90 cents at a local thrift store. I’ve watched it twice. The old days of American values that could inspire this great, uplifting film, will not come again soon.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:45 pm 277. rbj:

Yes, I have quit going to the movies. Did see the last Batman one, but that’s about all I can recall seeing. I do watch The Simpsons & SNL, but that’s more out of habit. I stopped watching The Daily Show when it became the Bash Bush Show in 2001. I’ll watch History, Discovery, Science, Military and Food Network shows, but nothing else on the networks. I do get the local paper (Toledo Blade) but only for the comics & sports (baseball & football) with breakfast.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:45 pm 278. Koblog:

And for what it’s worth, the “History” channel should be ashamed of itself — and change its name– for

… its non-stop drivel about the end of the world according to the Mayans

… the DaVinci Code Decoded (really! we wouldn’t kid about this!)

… the Nostradamus Effect

… any given ghost story

… really bad Bible shows

… and being All-Hitler-All-The-Time, which has even infected the National Geographic Channel.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:48 pm 279. John Meiners:

I pretty much agree but had to laugh and cough when you mentioned One Eyed Jacks. Talk about actors with effeminate and contrived appearance. Watch again and see such a drag queenish Brando with his fluffy silk scarves, makeup and wearing his hat back on his head in a glamour shot pose a cowgirl would envy.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:49 pm 280. Mike:

Wow, take away the eloquence and the 20% tips, add in duplicate bridge, and it’s my voice.

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:57 pm 281. guessing twice:

I didn’t know I could write that good and didn’t realize my name was Hanson either. Wow!

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:01 pm 282. Aviva:

I’m a 30 year old woman and I’ve also dropped out of popular culture. It started in 2001 when all the libs implied (and sometimes said out loud) that America deserved it and there should be no response. They also ridiculed anyone who felt differently. I realized that their spirits and values were being fed by the popular culture, which is like being fed a diet of sugar and doritos. I had always enjoyed pop culture before, but I started turning away from it after the attacks. I felt like an outcast.

Most popular music grates on my ears now and I tune into the classical music channel. I don’t get excited over movies and I don’t read the New York Times or Washington Post unless it’s lying around in the coffee shop. And then I put it down in exasperation. I guess I’m old before my time.

Ha, I spend more time reading Victor Davis Hanson columns than People or TMZ or Newsweek (which I read avidly as a teenager). One exception: icanhascheezburger.com . How can you not love that?

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:07 pm 283. J.G. an American Infantry Soldier:

Forgive me for all the “I” statements that follow, but I am foolishly inclined to think that some of you might be interested in my opinion.

#243
Robert, thanks for the prose. I smile when I read that, as I do own rifles, pistol, and knives and I use them at work nearly every day. When they look down on me, living out here in the far reaches of the West, I am sure that my horse rearing ancestors are proud.

Dr. Hanson, thanks for the article. Stephen Pressfield introduced me to you, and you turned me to Herodotus, and Xenophon. I read work from that closet homo Cartledge too; but I disregard most of his opinions as nonsense.

I’m an American Soldier, I’ve been fighting the sons of Perseus and their slaves. Because of you I have felt a connection to Hoplites over two thousand years distant.

I know first hand how the press lies and distorts and changes facts. This is probably one of the main reasons I put a great deal of stock in what Xenophon has to say and not so much in Cartledge’s opinion after the fact. Xenophon was a Soldier, he and I have ambled across the same ground, with the same fears, with our homelands so incomprehenisbly far away.

Sometimes when I think about the dead I have known, I wonder if what they gave was worth what they fought for? The “illiberati” (brilliant)! The endless throng of people with their hands out. The obese, the uneducated, and the faithless. I find more to respect among my enemies sometimes than I do the folks I am to protect at home.

I can retire anytime I like. I probably should, but I am compelled otherwise; freedom and liberty demand a sacrifice.

In Afghanistan there are chinese weapons, ammunition and explosives – new stuff mind you – that they use to kill American Soldiers with. Chinese stuff paid for with American dollars spent at WalMart and so many other retail stores. We’ve seen Pakistani Military helicopters drop off and pick up Taliban or Al Queida fighters – helicopters bought with US dollars. You folks won’t see any movies or news about that, no expose’s there.

Her’s something you might enjoy while checking out of pop culture.
http://www.apacheclips.com/media/10932/F-14_Close_Air_Support_Iraq,_HUD_Footage/

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:08 pm 284. Mike K:

There are a few bright spots. The studios are now selling high quality DVDs of restored films from the 30s. My wife, who is quite a bit younger than I, walked in one evening while I was watching “You Can’t take It With You.” She asked what it was and sat there to read. In a couple of minutes, she began to watch the movie and was intrigued. She asked if I could find a DVD since I had been watching one of the classic movie channels and she wanted to see the rest. I found that many of these great old films are now available in good restorations.

I did a blog post the other day on Erector Sets, a toy that occupied hundreds of hours of my time as a child. I find that there is quite an interest in these cultural artifacts of our past. I suspect the secret of math and science failure lies in the decline of these toys in children’s lives.

Reading is a refuge from the awful popular culture out there. A few years ago, I wrote a history of medicine for medical students. There was none available for medical students so I wrote it myself. I had a great deal of trouble finding a publisher, as you might expect. I finally published it myself and it is still selling pretty well. I was at a medical convention last week and was talking to a rare book dealer who sells medical books, many quite valuable from the 19th century and even before. We got talking about the history societies. I have been a member of the medical history society for years but never got to the conventions because the programs are just so dreary. The papers are all by grad students in history and none are of any interest to a physician, no matter how fascinated with history. He was laughing about it because he has exactly the same impression. This is just one small area of academic literature that I am familiar with. These people are not having trouble with losing the forest for the trees. They are focused on acorns. And global warming while urban heat islands rise on all sides. No common sense.

I think we are seeing a real cocooning effect with many of us. There was talk of this a few years ago but I think it is really here.

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:12 pm 285. Ever smiling and gentle on my mind:

I think I will always love the movie “The Outsiders” (1983) just because I was a teenager when it was playing and I was being a bit of a bad girl when I watched it at the Drive Inn( not that bad). When I think of it, I think of that happy night with my friends and it is a happy memory of the night we spent with our wild friend and were not to leave her house, but her Mother went out, and so did we once she was gone. We did not have enough money to get into the Drive Inn that night, so we walked through the back pasture, and crawled through the hole in the fence that every kid knew about. We set on the swings at the park that was part of the Drive Inn, watched the movie, and loved it. I love Francis Ford Coppola for that movie, and I will always love that one, because of the happy time we had watching it. It will always be my favorite movie from my generation, but I love it as much for the way I viewed it as for the characters and the story. I love it, because I have my story of the first night I watched it. I loved the Drive Inn, but it closed down just a few years after that, maybe because of the old holes in the fence. It was the only time I ever crawled through the hole in the fence, but I bet my friend I was with did it plenty of times.

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:15 pm 286. Steve O'Brien:

Dr. Hanson,

While reading your column, a chill ran down my spine. I had the eeriest notion that the words had leapt from my mind onto the page. I wish I could take comfort in the fact that another has experienced my same cultural disenfranchisement.

Sincere regrets,

Steve O’Brien
Portsmouth, New Hampshire

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:22 pm 287. John C. Randolph:

Most of what comes out of hollywood is dreck, but that’s always been the case. For every Citizen Kane, there were dozens of “gidget goes to college” movies.

There have been a few great movies in the last few years, and even one starring Tom Hanks. Saving Private Ryan is a pleasant surprise.

-jcr

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:23 pm 288. Jason Ramay:

Dear Dr. Hanson,

Bingo! What a marvelous post on the vacuity of contemporary culture. I don’t feel so bad now that my wife 12 years ago called me “a 27-year old geezer” after I complained about the music pounding out of a nearby car. At 39, not much has changed, but maybe there’s hope: last night she and I went to see John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett playing their hits – no band, just the two of them. And despite the liberal platitudes in some of the lyrics – the Indians are the real Americans, we’re just thieves, etc. – I heard Lovett sing about the current war, “I pray that I’m worth fighting for.” And his song about a WWII vet is genuinely moving. Maybe, in their take on the old American forms – folk ballads and gospel, jazz, country that’s muscular and melodious instead of just honky-tonk, these guys can point the way in popular music. On the other hand, where are their proteges? Those guys are already pretty old . . .

Enjoyed it, thanks,

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:28 pm 289. John AZ:

I turned off the tv for the summer and have read a score of books.

23 1/2 years ago the day after the Chicago Bears won the Super Bowl, some one ran into the office shouting, “The shuttle blew up!” I thought she was talking about the van the took people being buildings in our complex. Every since then sports stop being a priority to me. Well except for when the White Sox won the World Series in ‘05!

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:35 pm 290. Greg:

Check out Baen books. Read The Tuloriad by John Ringo and Thomas Kratman. Then try other books by Ringo, Kratman, David Weber, and David Drake. I think you would find a lot of them to be good, light entertainment.

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:37 pm 291. D:

sound like an irascible old coot. I like it.

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:39 pm 292. Now and Then:

185. pelaut:
” I and my sons have had lives without drugs and rock’n’roll (but lots of sex), and without movies and TV.”

What, exactly, are you saying here, peanut? I think that’s illegal. It is here anyway. Do you live in France? Some exotic third world tropical nightmare, perhaps?

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:44 pm 293. Sean:

I’m only 43 and I have felt this way for years, at least since my late 20s.

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:55 pm 294. MCNULTYLAW:

Call the feeling what you will. My natural inclination is to resist the feeling, but when you look over the wreckage of our society, it is hard not to be nostalgic. Just imagine, we have gone from Cole Porter to Kanye West is only two generations. And Cole Porter was part of POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT, not a rarified taste of the elites. Can the “boys” in Hollywood (aside from the superannualted holdovers like Robert Duvall and Clint Eastwood) compare with Burt Lancaster or Robert Mitchum? Or even Devid Niven? Why do I spend most of my time watching Turner Classic Moviers, fearing all the while that enough time will pass that movier from the Nineties will become “classice.” When tha happens, I will stop watching Turner Classic Movies. I have always love movies, although I finsd myself not going much (the last time was to see “Master and Commander” because it was a filmed version of Patrick O’Brien). In a sense, I think Hollywood has been a morass since the Seventies, although a few movies in the Eighties and Nineties were worthy of an adult’s time). We are probably less than 20 years away from a European cultural collapse (which Obame seems determines to accelerate).

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:56 pm 295. debbiesim:

. . . I think some of you are in the same boat: Have you stopped reading, listening, watching, and paying attention to most of what now passes for establishment public or popular culture?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. I have dropped out. I watched Planet of the Apes recently, which was still a little PC for me (”God damn them all to hell!”), but at least interesting and original. You really hit the nail on the head this time. But nobody in Hollywood or the NYT or any other liberal enclave has a clue we feel this way, or why.

Oct 19, 2009 - 4:57 pm 296. Dwight:

I happen to share the opinion that most stuff produced these days is dreck, or simply needless, but Thoreau thought the same thing in 1854. It is fascinating how much being said on this thread echoes what he wrote. Of course, I fear that many of you fear that nature has been taken away from you by the tree huggers and the global warmists. It hasn’t; it’s still out there.

As for the nostalgia about the good old days of John Wayne and Jimmy Cagney, that’s just silly. They could act in trash with the best of them.

I have turned to primary sources such as the journals of folks from the past, history books, and things like John Adams, Gettysburg, Ken Burn’s latest on the National Parks etc. I don’t always let ideology keep me from enjoying something if it is good…or even schlocky. Hell, I enjoyed Titanic a lot as it fulfilled a lifelong fascination with that night to remember.

I will watch TV from FOX to NFL football to Dirty Jobs some of the time, but not much. Don’t become like the eighty-year-old woman in my father’s church in the 1950’s. Her children, the worldly rascals had bought a television (gasp) but when she walked through the room, she wouldn’t even look at the screen. Hmmm, sometimes I feel that way about Hannity.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:00 pm 297. Subotai Bahadur:

I am not as withdrawn, but the trend is there. I do watch the occasional professional football game; solely to root AGAINST the Broncos. Other than that I only watch the Army-Navy game for college ball. Limited movies, there being some suitably politically incorrect productions. Try “Defiance” or “Taken”. Don’t get the papers. And I will watch the local TV news sometimes, but never the network news.

We have lost control of our country and society, perhaps forever, perhaps not. The final reckoning either way is going to be incredibly untidy. We are surrounded and governed by those I refer to as TWANLOC; Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen. I feel sorry for the world my children are inheriting, and recently have been feeling some satisfaction that as of yet I do not have grandchildren. Because their world would be a pure hell.

Subotai Bahadur

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:01 pm 298. biblio44:

244. IndependentDem: “…when Moho, David S, biblio44 and quesnay disagree (on anything, really), they are nasty and try to destroy.”

Well, Indy, when I run into a piece of right-wing, faux naive, thinly veiled self-aggrandizement, it’s hard not to react. I suspect that Dr. Vic is exaggerating some parts of his cultural abstinence, but I’m sure he’s telling the absolute truth when he admits to have “retreated inside some sort of 1950s time-warp.” So have so many PJM bloggers. Bring back HUAC!

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:02 pm 299. Greg:

By the sound of it, you would enjoy the better HBO shows – THE WIRE, THE SOPRANOS, and DEADWOOD, if you wanted to dip your toes back into popular culture. The experience of these shows are similar to reading, big, sprawling novels.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:08 pm 300. Betty:

Me, too. All of the above. I have a Netflix prescription and prefer British offerings, Spanish, French, Irish, period things, old Hollywood, etc.

As more of us turn against the purveyors of all this drivel perhaps things will change.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:10 pm 301. Steve S.:

I am 32 and have not owned a television for three years. I find even college sports to be harder and harder to watch. I get tired of having to hear insults in exchange for participating in pop culture. My wife and I are renting classics more and more. I fear for our future when we pay more attention to drug addicted pop stars than multi-trillion government takeovers of healthcare.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:14 pm 302. macphisto:

I am in general agreement with the majority of commenters here regarding most aspects of current popular culture. The first Narnia movie was the first film i’d seen since the Sex Pistols “Filth and the Fury” documentary, and i can’t imagine when the next new film will be released which i’d find worth the time to watch. I gave up on American professional team sports after the Montana/Rice 49ers years, which may have been the Last Hurrah for the notion of playing as a team rather than for the glory of the individual player; my sports content is now supplied by European football and auto racing of various kinds. Et cetera.

However, i think it’s a mistake to totally dismiss current, erm, cultural output, even when i find the political/cultural opinions of the artist(s) repellent. For example, Thom Yorke, the lead singer of Radiohead, is a run-of-the-mill Euroleftist, but Radiohead’s music nonetheless addresses the alienation of the individual in the 21st century in compelling, relevant, and touching ways which depend not at all on his personal ideology. Granted, it’s an awful slog to find anything meaningful in contemporary culture, but t’was it not ever thus?

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:15 pm 303. TooTall:

Love VDH. Love PJM.

Will concede that current culture’s signal to noise ratio is heavily dominate by noise. However, I am deeply concerned about the hopelessness represented by most of the posts here. “Everything new sucks”, “Things were much better back when” “There will never be another like [Insert Name Here]“. Sad sad sad.

The best is yet to come. I hope for another Mozart, another Tolkien, another Jimmy Stewart, another Jimi Hendrix, another Matrix. Please! Have hope!

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:16 pm 304. Oldcrow:

Yup just canceled my cable I have no flat screen TV’s and have not gone to see a movie in over a year, the last DVD I watched I purchased it was a classic movie made in 1959, I have no plans to go back.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:17 pm 305. Richard Gregg:

I’m the same way, but at 60+, maybe it’s part of the aging process. Stopped listening to the daily media during the “Clinton bashing” and never went back. Just get my news from our smaller local paper (part of the ANG chain, surprisingly good and with local news especially), and the internet. Old movies on DVD are great to watch (see “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” with Gregory Peck and understand how this “upwardly mobile, keep up with the Jones’s society” originated in the 50’s).
Daughter gave me a Rodgers & Hammerstein 5 movie set that I finally got around to watching, expecting them to be too old & corny…quite the opposite ! Well done and refreshing in their old time positive attitude, even “The Sound of Music”. Haven’t felt that good in a long time, and even got me to go to church at least once again !
Take another look and you might be pleasantly surprised too…
Now back to work…!!

RSG

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:17 pm 306. Trouble:

A few years ago, I had a short-lived, mismatched relationship with a woman 7 years younger than myself. She was reading something by David Sedaris and I asked her what she liked about it and why she found it interesting. Her reply: “It’s just so well done! And culturally relevant!” My response: “Cultural relevance; hmm. I’ll see your David Sedaris and raise you a Bach fugue.”

Needless to say, the relationship never went anywhere.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:19 pm 307. Mo:

I don’t know why my comment did not post, since there was no profanity or anything remotely offensive in it. Unfortunately I don’t remember all of it to recreate it. Very frustrating. So I’ll just make a second try at it, abbreviated:

I understand the desire to completely withdraw. But I disagree with this approach. How can we reach a culture that we choose to not even be a part of?

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:22 pm 308. Xiaoding:

Have to make this quick, as HOUSE in on in a minute.

Really, as you get older, you have to FORCE yourself to stay current, lest one ossify.

Music still exists, and is better than ever. Lady Gaga is a real treat, Katy Perry, amazing! The women seem to have it nowadays. Try Bic Runga for depth.

The worst tv show of today, is better than the best shows were twenty years ago. It’s that the people making tv now, grew up with it. It’s instinctive.

The television series, as an art form, is the modern Dickens update. Imagine seven years to do War and Peace.

Yes, tv is mostly garbage. So is every other form of entertainment. But SCRUBS was amazing. HOUSE is great.

Don’t forget the cooking shows! Americas Test Kitchen is a national treasure!

Movies are at a low point. The old gneration has too…die off. Killing them all would be quicker, but dicey, unless it was filmed. The current movie companies are brain dead. A smart movie like Revolver comes along, and they don’t even release it in the US, cause they knows we is so dumb. The DVD is edited to take out the brainy parts.

The bunker is fine, for a time. But don’t stay there. The child in us needs sunshine.

………

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:26 pm 309. Old Airman 2000:

Let’s face it Doc! Your BS meter is pegged! From the sound it, so is everyone else’ on this blog.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:26 pm 310. Fred:

I not with amusement that you use a movie metaphor quite unselfconsciously — and a recent movie, at that: Groundhog Day (1993).

You are, perhaps, not quite so estranged from the surrounding culture as you think!

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:41 pm 311. Janetoo:

Bravo. I call this “my inner Betty Crocker.” I read old Norah Lofts novels and watch ‘Laura’ and ‘The Ghost and Mrs. Muir’ – but it is pretty much the same thing. Thank you for expressing this…

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:46 pm 312. Willys:

High School Musical I, II, III. Just enjoy it for what it is.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:49 pm 313. Patrick Carroll:

One great aspect of this age is that all the classics are easily available.

Every time I remember something I enjoyed from when I was younger, I go to Amazon and add it to my wish list. An amazing amount of literature is a free download. Take that, Library of Alexandria.

As for modern music and film, I have those reviewers I trust, mostly at National Review. The filter the dross, so I don’t have to.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:51 pm 314. David W. Earl:

You know how you lose track of the book you love because you have loaned it out too many times. A recent NYC trip allowed me to find it in a used bookstore. It’s a WWII memoir by a combat surgeon assigned to a combat armored command in the last months of the war in Europe. The hardback I have has a blurb by Edward Abbey–don’t know that that would send me rushing to buy. Thought of it when you mentioned a preference for amateur military accounts. Very readable: “The Other Side of Time” by Brendan Phibbs, who is in his mid90’s and still kicking in Tucson (a cardiologist). He occasionally speaks to our bar section at seminars (worker’s comp law). If he lives to do it again, I’m gonna ask him to tell us “what he saw” (the death camps–a riveting part at the end), because it will be the last time I will have a chance to hear it from one who saw. Thanks for your writings.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:56 pm 315. David W. Earl:

You know how you lose track of the book you love because you have loaned it out too many times. A recent NYC trip allowed me to find it in a used bookstore. It’s a WWII memoir by a combat surgeon assigned to a combat armored command in the last months of the war in Europe. The hardback I have has a blurb by Edward Abbey–don’t know that that would send me rushing to buy. Thought of it when you mentioned a preference for amateur military accounts. Very readable: “The Other Side of Time” by Brendan Phibbs, who is in his mid90’s and still kicking in Tucson (a cardiologist). He occasionally speaks to our bar section at seminars (worker’s comp law). If he lives to do it again, I’m gonna ask him to tell us “what he saw” (the death camps–a riveting part at the end), because it will be the last time I will have a chance to hear it from one who saw. Thanks for your writings. Dave Earl

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:57 pm 316. Mike K:

Interesting. I guess my comment didn’t pass muster. I still agree with your post but don’t much like your comment policy.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:00 pm 317. Red State Mo.:

Am with you, Mr. Hanson. My family has gravitated to the same old movies you mention, especially anything with John Wayne. Can’t remember the last thing we saw on the big screen. Don’t miss it either.

We are, however, very focused on what’s going on in our government. Way to go tea partiers.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:01 pm 318. rasqual:

Yeah, but the fun part is that our kids are growing up able to watch — and enthusiastically watching — films that I didn’t even get to see as a kid because old films weren’t in theaters and we didn’t have video tapes or DVDs.

My kids are being influenced by media my parents grew up with, which I didn’t have a chance to get influenced by.

That’s some trippy stuff. It’s an extremely cool scenario.

Heh. My kids even like the music I grew up with. A LOT.

50 years old and cool. Not bad.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:05 pm 319. kweed:

VDH and other cultural drop-outs: watch BELLA (2006) – a great movie Hollywood ignored that showcases issues of FAITH, FAMILY, and REDEMPTION. Get it on Amazon here…

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:07 pm 320. Mike:

Right on, right on.

I got out of the the TV habit when I went into the Army in 1975 at the tender age of 22 and never, Thank God, got hooked again.

Ditto for music. I was never much of a rock fan, always and still do, prefer classical, esp Italian baroque. But the old rockers, especially the British, tended to have real musical ability. Jethro Tull “Songs from the Wood” is still one of my favorites and easily some of the most musical rock ever composed.

But cheer up. We are made for beauty and truth and when we get desperate enough we will once again seek them out.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:11 pm 321. Robinsolana:

I am in much the same place as many here.
However, I have a different way of looking at it.

It’s a big world out there. We are privileged to have better access to information about it than ever. Think Google Earth. I can ‘fly’ over just about anywhere on earth I would want to.
I can access VDH and many other thoughtful sources of information without going through the Obama zombie media and their ilk.
But I also avoid most of the main stream press and popular culture as just intellectual poison. I am repulsed at the idea of helping fund such garbage.

If the popular music is junk, then there is easy access to exciting music from generations past and other places around the world. What a cornucopia. I can get 30 versions of Danny Boy. What’s not to like?

I would also say, if you want something to focus on. Focus on our soldiers. They have served above and beyond in a tough war, won against all elite advice in Iraq and continue to be our hope in Afghanistan. I get goose bumps on my arms when the airport crowd starts quietly clapping as they come off a plane. I have seen their very young faces training in the desert before going to Iraq. Our self-involved media does not have a clue, but ordinary Americans do. They struggle to express themselves, but they know.
As long as these young Americans join and serve we are not yet lost. Partly we just need to find our voice and honor them.

When did the nuanced media mention the word, hero?

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:20 pm 322. kweed:

correction…BELLA was from the 2007-2008 time frame

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:22 pm 323. Mary Jo:

I like Buble’s version (the umpteenth) of Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love.”

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:36 pm 324. Texas Pete:

Wow, Dr. Hanson. You’ve really touched a nerve with me and my wife, and, from the looks of the other commenters, quite a few others.

We stopped watching broadcast news and network TV almost a decade ago. The papers stopped showing up at the doorstep even earlier than that. We still watch TV these days, but mostly DVRed programs that don’t tick us off.

There’s a reckoning coming. A lot of people like us who remember much better times in America are fed up and tired of sitting quietly while our country goes to hell. We’ve started standing up now, though. The elites better get ready.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:44 pm 325. Michael:

I just want to add my name to the list. I, too, have dropped out of popular culture.

One vignette– several years ago, I stopped off at a Blockbuster on my way home from a long week at work. I worked my way around the outside of the store & could not find one single new release to which I was willing to devote two hours of my life (and this was exhausted, on a Friday night). I ended up renting a Bogart film & never went back.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:47 pm 326. SteveOfTheNorth:

Vic,et al

Now that all of you who went over the wall,welcome.
I went over in’86. It is not so much as “dropping out” but,
more like a dynamic shift into the creation or re-constitution
of more human interaction.

We have arrived here at various times and routes.
Now where do we go from here?

The real question is: In an age of(almost) instant communication,
do we need our masters in Hollywood? On Wall Street? Or even DC?
Are we on the cusp of a new republic?

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:54 pm 327. Chris:

I’ve noticed that I’ve been distancing myself from popular culture for the past few years. Which is odd if you know my past. I worked in the music business for 12 years as a sound engineer. I lived through hair metal, “alternative” rock and used to play this game where I’d pick through a jukebox’s inventory to see how many acts I had worked with or for in some capacity. I played in bands. One landed in Musician Magazine’s (now defunct) annual list of top 10 unsigned bands. My sisters live in CA, one works as a story editor for reality shows in LA, the other in “big advertising” in SF. I have nothing in common with them anymore and, right or wrong, I think they’re playing for the black hats now, those that make raising a family, running a business, and enjoying life as an American harder every day.

Since getting married, having kids, 9/11 and starting my business, I’ve gone someplace else. I find nothing (really, nothing) in popular music that I can latch onto. I got back from Austin City Limits two weeks ago but the wife and I blew off the concert (the lineup was awful) to people watch, drink beer & talk.

Country radio fills my truck. Yeah, my truck. I always owned sporty, fast cars. Now I drive pickups. I find I have much more in common with simple, hardworking men. Those who take risks, whether it be kids or a business. While I considered myself one once, I can’t handle being around chin-pulling intellectuals. My sister’s wedding in CA last year, presided over by their yoga teacher, was almost painful. Her husband, though he tries, is a bed-wetting worry wart who doesn’t want kids. Likewise for my other sister’s husband. Permanent adolescence. My dad, who I’ve gotten a lot closer to, is a former English prof, a published former Guggenheim fellow. He turned his back on academe over the years. Once the crazy neighborhood liberal, he raged about feminism and the hard leftward turn at work during his last 10+ years in the classroom. I never graduated from college. He’s very proud of what I’ve done and have become. Self-made.

I bought a house, and now a business, deep in the cold northwoods. We drive 5 hours each way to escape our urban life and all of our nice (but almost universally liberal) friends. As a result I’ve picked up all kinds of outdoor hobbies, the kind we never engaged in as kids: hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, etc. Redneck may be the new punk rock. Sadly, I don’t remember being this alone, even when I was the first in my H.S. to pierce his ear.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:54 pm 328. Walt Zengen:

AMEN! If I had your talent for writing (I don’t), I could have written this article practically verbatim. Very nicely done and spot on!

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:58 pm 329. MisterBee:

If I were really, really, smart, I could have expressed myself half this well. Thank you Professor. My thoughts mirror yours.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:58 pm 330. jamie:

It is a personal choice. I have not dropped-out of pop-culture. I walk amongit in its own clothes. This too will pass.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:58 pm 331. Teacher in Tejas:

I joke with my high school seniors that I haven’t listened to the radio since I got a cd player in my car. That’s pretty much true, but find myself not listening to much of anything musical anymore.

Recently I have been delivering pizzas on Saturday nights, and at the end of the day I am worn out from sports talk radio here in Texas or college football, as every school in fifty miles has a Houston AM affiliate (UT, A&M, Tech, etc. even an LSU station)But at 11 one of the local news talk stations has been playing encores of Casey Casum’s American Top 40 broadcasts from the classic days.

It is amazing, the years they pick seem to be random (have heard 79 and October 73) and they broadcast the whole show from #40 to #1.

When you listen to the quality of the music that was being played then, even in the lower parts of the hot one hundred, you realize how far the music biz has truely fallen.

Its nice to hear the hits, but also I have heard so many forgotten gems, that never made it to the top; songs by great artists that have almost been lost to history, never having made it to the Top Ten and never being on the “Greatest Hits” album.

The 73 show was great, Seals and Crofts, Rita Coolidge, a Marvin GAye/Diana Ross duet and the hottest soul and funk to come out of Detroit before it morphed into Disco a few years later. It was nice hearing Casey talk about this brand new debut act, “Kool and the Gang.” Hope they have a good career ahead of them.

Also, remember just how many cool instrumentals there were back in those days, that actually charted.

Yeah, call me the grumpy old man (only 44 Yikes), but I really look forward to Casey and the Countdown Redux on Saturday nights.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:58 pm 332. LizzE:

A lot of people say, it’s our generation, except I feel very similar, and I’m 22.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:59 pm 333. NedLudd:

My understanding of popular culture was that it was a way of giving us information and signs about how to conduct ourselves among everyone else around us. It was not the end all of my life. When I absorbed enough from it to get along in this world, I didn’t need it as much. I would much rather do than watch.

Although much of my popular culture is “dated”, I don’t believe I have some magical insight on the truth to do anything but judge for myself what interests me. I very well and have found things that I can still read, watch or be entertained by that happened well after (or before) the short time I was paying attention to popular culture.

As for civic duty, I don’t consider it a duty as such. I have seen through my life that these actions, small though they may be, are a way of doing the right things in our lives and should just be pursued for those reason above all others.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:00 pm 334. JeninCT:

My, oh my. I do believe this means you’re getting old. I am too, and it’s alright to admit it.

One movie you must not miss is Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino. It will speak to you in your own language.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:01 pm 335. NedLudd:

My understanding of popular culture was that it was a way of giving us information and signs about how to conduct ourselves among everyone else around us. It was not the end all of my life. When I absorbed enough from it to get along in this world, I didn’t need it as much. I would much rather do than watch.

Although much of my popular culture is “dated”, I don’t believe I have some magical insight on the truth to do anything but judge for myself what interests me. I very well may and have found things that I can still read, watch or be entertained by that happened well after (or before) the short time I was paying attention to popular culture.

As for civic duty, I don’t consider it a duty as such. I have seen through my life that these actions, small though they may be, are a way of doing the right things in our lives and should just be pursued for those reason above all others.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:03 pm 336. proreason:

ditto

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:04 pm 337. dck:

wow: 244 comments.

Well, you asked for it.

I’m around your age; perhaps a bit older.

–I don’t own a TV, and don’t expect to buy another. ‘Nuf said.

–I read, one book after another: “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy; “Novus Ordo Seclorum” about the founding of the United States; Frederick the Great’s commentary on military matters of his times; today I bought a highly recommended history of piracy; and I read an occasional bestselling “spy” novel.

I find a lot of good history books secondhand, written by British authors ten or more years ago. An example would be “The Destruction of Lord Raglan,” a biography of the British general commanding in the Crimean war, actually a superb telling of that little-known war.

Oh, and I’ve read four or five works by an American historian named Victor-David-Somebody: Slow reads but always fascinating.

–I rent or buy movies only if a particularly good one comes along (I play them on my laptop).

I enjoyed all the “Lord of the Rings” series. I even went back and read the books, which I’d ignored in their 60’s heyday. I like GOOD science fiction (Alien).

I enjoyed “Children of Men”; ditto “No Country For Old Men.” I’m interested in anything “Bourne” or “Bond”, and looking forward to the upcoming “Avatar.” That one I may go see in the theater.

Oh, and I like Harry Potter. Want to make something of it?

Everything else out of Hollywood is saccharin emotional drama redeemed deus ex machina (unlike Harry Potter); sensory candy for screaming kids; or political boilerplate of one kind or another: even the best of it (like “Children of Men”) the product of what I take to be a postmodern vision.

–I’m about where you are on Rock music. I like certain New Age music, I’ll listen to Classical music, and I’m developing an interest in Celtic Music.

My sister and her husband are deep into Nashville Country, of all things for a pair of technically-educated, Mt. View, California Liberals. Today’s rock seems beyond people of our age. I don’t regard Rap or Hip Hop as music.

If your point in this essay is that we live in a decadent, Postmodern age of intellectual and artistic poverty and ennui, I agree.

Maybe we’re both just Philistines.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:04 pm 338. suburban_mom:

We “dropped out” 20 years ago when we started raising a family. We’ve managed without a TV, the public school system, newspapers, or “modern” culture for all that time. It seems we’re part of a trend, imagine that!

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:06 pm 339. Rob:

“O Tempora, O Mores” sums it up rather nicely. My reading of fiction is also largely limited to older fiction, the stuff written when authors assumed a basic degree of literacy on the part of their readers. I remember reading a C.S Forester novel in the Hornblower series, written in the 1930s. These were novels written for the popular audience of the day. In one of them, Hornblower has been injured and is dictating his official report of the battle to a navy chaplain, but is suffering writer’s block and keeps re-doing the first sentence. The chaplain tells him to just get started, advising Hornblower that the first sentence does not have to be “Arma virumque cano” — with no explanation for the reader, as Forester and his editors simply assumed that the average reader of popular fiction of that day would clearly recognize the quote. How times have changed. I find modern fiction, with a few exceptions –such as Louis Auchincloss — largely unreadable and boring. Dr. Hanson, keep up the great work.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:07 pm 340. Don:

I’ve got a music tip for you:

Green Day’s two latest LPs: American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown.

If you like The Who’s Tommy and Quadrophenia, you will find that sort of genius at work in these two LPs (even if you don’t like the politics).

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:18 pm 341. George Best:

Prof Hansen, I think you over doing it a bit and acting like a depressed liberal. I mean come on our priorities change as we age and every parent is wishing they lived in the time they were kids. Life was just simple and we find what we like. The bottom line is there is more crap out there in any aspect of life from people to entertainment and technology allows us to see more of it quicker.

Imagine a time where almost any kind of tv show, movie, or music can be located in digital format. Yes there is a lot of junk that you have to sort through but good stuff can be found if you look hard enough. Back in the day we had to take what network tv gave us. No cable no home movies. Now we have it all.

I still like to reminisce and watch shows like Streets of San Francisco and other movies from that time period, but if we had to go back in time knowing what we know now, you would die of frustration knowing what you are limited to. Every generation gets the benefit of what the previous generation did plus the talent that comes in their own. Yeah too many movies and music suck because what is considered main stream and commercial is horrible, but I can find great stuff. We all can.

Its called time my friend and I am going to enjoy it. The sad thins is that despite all the crap that fills our daily lives, we can turn it off, find some good stuff very easily and still die before we can watch and read it all.

The world might blow up due to the stupidity of the people in power but I will be enjoying life and all it has to offer until my last breath.

If you want to start a depression thread, please do so, but it has nothing to with too much crap being made by entertainers etc.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:22 pm 342. kathrynf:

Good Lord, did I write this? No you did… are we sick? I thought I was on an isolated island at age 45. Thanks for the common thread life-line,
kathryn

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:26 pm 343. Catherine:

Amen, Dr. Hanson! You have described my life in the past ten years now. I have to admit the last movie(s) I got excited about were the Lord of the Rings, but before and after that, NOTHING. What a cultural wasteland we have created.

Laughably, when you said you have retreated to the 1950’s, I have to admit that I went even further back (though I am younger than you are. I’m stuck watching Upstairs Downstairs, and admiring Victorian and Edwardian society. There’s my escape…

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:32 pm 344. PJ:

I feel the same way–and I have a degree in film and am a writer! I loathe the values of Hwood expressed in their self-loathing movies. I read, especially history, to fill in the gaps of knowledge that became so obvious after 9/11.

Some of our problem may be age; I am over 50 as well. But even children find no magic in pop culture.

BTW I would like to hear more about the quietism of Rome as well, if you would like to talk about that.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:36 pm 345. Ciero:

I too feel like a stranger in my own culture. And I’m only 30 years old.

In fact the only current TV show I follow at all is an animated show called “Cross Game” which is all about high school baseball and could take place in any small town America, yet it airs in Japan. It’s a throwback to the 50’s and the days when network TV ran shows during prime time that a whole family could watch together.

Even Disney doesn’t produce the good stuff like this anymore.

Baseball is the only sport I follow at all- while disappointed in some of it, I have hopes that baseball is going through a purge and revival.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:41 pm 346. Ouisie:

Agree completely. I am cut off from my own culture. I cannot relate much at all. And I’m only 48 years old!

But I will recommend novels by Mitch Albom, who reaffirms the importance of individuals and of personal relationships, and I enjoyed a fairly recent movie about the rise of the Californial wine industry, Bottle Shock.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:43 pm 347. Michiko Gosney:

This is the best country and the world, and just like you my family do the best we can to uphold its values.

Our art and media, are as confused as the people who are trying to pretend to be Leaders of this country.

We just have to do our best, just like what you said try to hang on to the values that we hold dear. This will all come to roost. Hopefully we still have a country that we can be proud of, or maybe we can be like the heroes of Atlas Shrugged, if you plan to migrate to an island let me know.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:45 pm 348. Jim Sweeney:

Best column you’ve ever written.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:48 pm 349. scott:

Hey all you internet noobs:

Any more than five lines without a line break is junk.

Get a clue. Please. Nobody’s reading your screeds cause their eyes go crossed.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:53 pm 350. bill:

Remember when you could take your official Cub Scout™ pen knife to elementary school without fear of expulsion? Or actually fearing your father’s reaction to something like smoking dope? Or not being coddled by the Principle as a poor misunderstood sufferer of XYZ syndrome or disease after you did something naughty at school?

So what happened? Is it just the Baby Boomer sense of entitlement that came along with growing up in the wealthiest, most luxurious society that ever graced the planet? There are so many who expect it all *now* no matter what their impulse might be.

We admired those tough guys at the matinee’s. They taught us a little about right and wrong rather than fulfilling whatever base instinct aroused us at the moment. There are a few decent movies out there but they are generally box office flops. Unfortunately people want the outrageous stuff. Same with the news. It’s unfortunate that many young people see the crude and cynical Daily Show or Bill Maher as the norm. They don’t have the perspective of Cronkite, Huntley/Brinkley and so forth as a point of reference.

It’s not all bad but I fear the direction in which this society is headed and the legacy Baby Boomers are leaving subsequent generations. A Banana republic in the making?

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:03 pm 351. Roux:

Ditto

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:13 pm 352. Neobuzz:

Victor,

Most commenters probably see your post as social commentary, but I view it as a cry for help. Yes, I was at one time in your boat, but no more. There is a cure. Here is the doctor’s prescription: Buy a satellite dish, subscribe to every available channel, and invest in – believe me it is an investment – a large capacity DVR (Tivo Box). There are literally thousands of shows on hundreds of channels from around the world with surprisingly good programming or, at least, poor but entertaining programming. It is helpful if you have some facility with foreign languages, though it is by no means a necessity.

And be brave about it. I had no trouble viewing my first Miss Guatemala Pagent or American Chopper, but some shows elicited a reflexive revulsion. I had to steel myself the first time I watched an American Idol episode, but I’m glad I did. It is fun to see those kids perform and it will put you right back in touch with popular culture. Good luck to you.

Yours truly,

Neobuzz

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:15 pm 353. sbron:

You’ve probably read Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer.” The author realized in the early 60s that an era was ending. The book does a superb job of describing the dissolution of the 1950’s American ethos, and the loss of a vast pre-WWII European-American culture. Percy’s description of seeing William Holden in person on the street in New Orleans is the best explanation of the difference between the 50s and earlier actors versus today’s.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:23 pm 354. Countrylawyer:

I haven’t owned a television of my own since about 1987. When I got married in 1992 my wife had one; we bought our first house and for about ten months I refused to carry it in. Went to visit some friends out of town and she and my mother snuck it in while I was gone (damned un-British, that was). But we’ve never had cable, and I make a point of reacting with conspicuous ill grace when She watches it (which I’m happy to report is seldom). I’ve never listened to the radio.

Declining to march to the insistent beat of Today’s Drummer is great, because it frees you to engage with all the worlds that have ever been, and that universe will always be infinitely larger that What Is Now. Stepping back to hone awareness of times, places, and people who came before us allows us to exist simultaneously in the present and at all former times. It allows us to overlay the Crisis du Jour with lenses, screens, and filters of perception denied to those who seem not to suspect that the world did not start with them.

To all of the commenters: You can do more than step back. You can fight back. Make a point of non-recognition of current pop-culture references (”And who exactly is this particular harlot you’ve been mentioning?”). Be seen in public reading a biography of Calvin Coolidge, or Catherine d’Medici, or a history of the Hanseatic League. And for you parents, while you can’t keep the dreck away from your children (and in fact shouldn’t hermetically seal them off from it . . . no one likes to be ostracized at that age), you can sure see to it that within your home they are steeped in the richness of all those who came before us. When my oldest son was three days old, I read him “Jeeves and the Purity of the Turf”; it was either that or “The Great Sermon Handicap.” Drop Wodehouse references into your everyday lives (whenever I’m solicited to donate a dollar at the grocery check-out, I usually write my name in as Leon Trotsky, in homage to Bertie’s friend Sipperly doing the same when arrested on Boat Race Night).

My three year-old can sing most of the Monroe Brothers’ “What is a Home Without Love?” from The Three Pickers; the older two have got to see Earl Scruggs play live at the Ryman. One of the first records my oldest boy listened to was an old Ed McCurdy collection of children’s songs. I can’t say they’ve really enjoyed the 19th Century German university songs I’ve got in my car’s CD player as much as I have, but you never know when a distant memory of them will be awakened years from now, and the next thing you know they’ve run off to be an exchange student somewhere.

Observe ANZAC Day, know why it is important (or Waterloo Day, or, coming up this Wednesday, Trafalgar Day) and TELL SOMEONE. Explain to strangers why you’re drinking a solemn beer on July 1. Find a copy of Churchill’s My Early Life, make a fistful of copies of the paragraph from the end of the chapter at which point he’s graduated from Sandhurst, the one that starts out with (I’m quoting from memory, so forgive me), “Twenty to twenty-five; those are the years!” Hand the copies out to every graduating high school or college student.

Disengagement need not mean surrender, and in a fight like this we’re not whipped until we give up. So let’s not.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:34 pm 355. Mitch:

Alas, I find myself in a similar situation. I have been tuned out of the contemporary popular culture for some time but have recently found myself drawn to the works of an America decades past. I suppose I am more familiar with the modern culture than you are, but I mostly see it only as a joke, and as a somewhat sad reminder of what could be.

I’m only in my mid-twenties, but I have been tired of the pathetic culture the Boomers have produced for as long as I can remember. I only hope my generation can do better.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:39 pm 356. Blake:

I’m the odd man out in a lot of ways myself. Music, in particular. Sports for sure. A lot of the things VDH gave up recently, I gave up as a child. Newspapers when my schoolmates’ celebrity parents were interviewed by papers—who got factual details about things like carpet color wrong. TV news when noticing they changed the facts from day-to-day about the stories they serialized, without a nod to acknowledge the changes. Computers drastically reduced my TV time, then cable wiped out any connection to the big 3 or 4. I have a lot of storage connected to my DVR, and I set it mostly to record movies.

But I do go to the movies once or even twice a week. It’s been a great year for horror. Lotta emphasis on suspense and storytelling, and non-gory shocks. But not everyone likes horror.

But most are not from Hollywood, I confess. That might not be an option in Selma.

Etsba Elohim

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:44 pm 357. Christopher Kraemer:

“could care less” or “couldn’t care less”?!

Come on, Prof’! You know the difference!!

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:49 pm 358. Gaige:

Mr. Hanson, I understand your… resignation regarding the worthlessness of modern music, television, and cinema. I myself have largely withdrawn from it.

But two things you might enjoy. The first is a well-written and acted little show on SyFy called Sanctuary. Stars the lovely Amanda Tapping, and some brilliant lesser known young actors. Has a sort of Doctor Who feeling to it, but is rather darker, and more militaristic.

The second is a singer/songwriter I’ve followed for a while. Amy Lee of Evanescence is a remarkable young woman, an extremely talented writer, and has a divine voice. She herself is a fan of Coldplay, so you’re in good company.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:52 pm 359. comatus:

Furthermore:

Carthage must be destroyed.

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:02 pm 360. PD Quig:

“If time were not a moving thing, and I could make it stay”

A different context, that great old song was, but the feeling is just the same. There is little left of the America that raised me. My Polish-born family doctor will hang it up soon and return to Poland–it is too socialist for him here. If only the entire country could be just like me for one year: there would be no Hollywood. There would be no professional sports. There would be little on television. There would be few newspapers. There would be few magazines. There would be no bankster oligarchy, no Federal Reserve, no political corruption, no labor unions, and the federal budget would be 25% of what it is now. There would be no Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton, no racial politics, no Black Caucus, no ACORN, no affirmative action. There would be no takings, no environmental extremism, no ban on oil drilling, no ACLU, no global warming hysteria, no militant atheism, no judicial activism. There would be no negotiating with tyrants and terrorists, there would be no UN, no NATO.

It would be boring as heck for a year but the results would be worth it.

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:08 pm 361. Marty:

Me, too.

Lately been reading a lot about how the US prepared for WW2, esp naval and Pacific issues, maybe in part because there was a time when liberals loved and fought for America and part of me so yearns for that, but also generally a “ruling class” if you will who made no bones about defending this country’s interests. I find some solace in all that, but also acute intellectual interest in reading about things like Lend-Lease, War Plan Orange and the Vinson-Trammell Acts.

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:13 pm 362. buddy larsen:

Try the Coen Brothers’ films, Dr. Hanson. Really. No joke. I’d try to blurb ‘em but too much is on the screen and not easily pigeonholed. They ridicule the culture, but warmly and with wit & good-natured humor. The characters if at times cartoonish are at least the fully-drawn Chuck Jones quality, only written rather than tooned. And even the utter losers and villains are handled with a certain basic respect that one extends toward the human being in even the mangiest critter (something bad may get you for this recognition; something worse will surely get you without it). Everything is done with affection, and the camaraderie of fellow flotsams and jetsums afloat in the fin de siecle current, who having no reason but to do it anyway, hail one another as we bob along past. I read somewhere they’re both serious students of Kierkegaard (he that rarest sharp in the world of postmodern philoso-flats).

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:18 pm 363. Mike S.:

Reading your column today, I experienced the same feeling I had when first I heard Rush Limbaugh in 1989. I wondered then as I do now; “How did that guy read my thoughts?”.

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:19 pm 364. el polacko:

is there tons of crap out there ? sure. i don’t think you’d get much of an argument on that point from anyone but the undiscerning young. however, full retreat is a one-way ticket to the grave. it doesn’t take that much effort to have some general knowledge of popular culture..and just a little more effort to find much that is good amidst the dreck. so many of the comments here are of the same old “i’m so intellectually superior that i don’t own a television” variety that we’ve been hearing for as long as there have been televisions. it’s okay to catch up on tv films when they are on dvd but there’s some shame in having enjoyed them years earlier when others were watching the broadcasts? that’s just silly.
are the top ten songs mostly garbage..sure..but is that a reason write-off all currently produced music?
don’t like movies about the lives of gay people? well, 99 percent of movies are NOT about gay people, so what’s the problem? are your political views too sensitive to handle their being challenged? well, try reading some reviews before you see a flick and be forewarned..and can’t one just see a silly comedy or a shoot-em-up for a little escapist FUN? there’s still plenty of ’serious’ films being made. these are not mutually exclusive choices. we are also blessed with access to all of what has come before us like no society ever has. if anything, there is a media over-load that can be a bit overwhelming. i’m getting up in years too so i understand what it’s like to get pooped out but i’m not quite ready to pack it all in yet.

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:19 pm 365. Mike:

Sometime during the last few years I turned off the TV, dumped the subscription to Newsweek, stopped listening much to the radio, quit giving money to the Republican party and started taking Catholicism very, very seriously. Now, if I can just break loose of the internet…

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:29 pm 366. buddy larsen:

RWBurke/#243; That was wonderful –thank you! –note that VDH mentions Ben Johnson –possibly the greatest hossman of all moviedom –

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:36 pm 367. davis,br:

Like many others relate, I could have written this as a description of my own life. “Me, too (glad I’m not the only one).”

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:42 pm 368. Epictetus:

It’s good to know that I’m not alone. Thank you.

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:44 pm 369. Safely Anonymous:

Professor Hanson, I agree with what you’ve written in this article – in the broad strokes. There are occasional, exceptional, cultural gems that shine through however, particularly in films and novels. I recall that in the spring of 2007 you had nothing but kind words for the adaptation of Frank Miller’s “300,” for example.

There’s a recent novel by John Ringo, which I’m sure someone must have brought to your attention by now, entitled “The Last Centurion,” which in the year since its release has come all too close to depicting daily headlines. But within it also holds simple reminders that all things must and shall pass. The uneducated and unthinking have a powerful microphone, but it is far from the only voice out there.

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:50 pm 370. Bob Schwalbaum:

Yesterday on “Q&A”.. our “National Treasure” Brian Lamb did SE CUPP.. Catch it if you can.

As a home-bound invalid all I can say is… “Thank God for FOXNEWS and TCM”!

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:55 pm 371. Peggy:

WAHOO!! Never thought I’d be happy to be called a drop-out. Looks like I’m in good company.

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:02 pm 372. Frank Dineen:

Prof. Hansen and all your thoughtful contributors:

May I recommend a movie:

“The Lives of Others.”

It’s about the Stasi’s effect on a playwright and his actress-lover in East Germany. I hesitate to say more; only that it’s a bracing reminder of how good a film can be. It’s German. I’d guess you could rent it. Some, I reckon, will want to buy it, as they might a treasured book. It certainly has entered my cinematic pantheon (a sparsely populated space, where “The Third Man” is Zeus). Every post-literate undergrad, venal, vapid politician and trivia-soaked dimbulb voter should be made to sit quietly and just watch it.

Additionally: Anyone in search of a story about an American worth knowing about is welcome to visit the site below.

http://www.virtualwall.org/dd/DineenTG01a.htm

“Nothi sauton,” Professor! (I translated the Odyssey when I was 17 — not voluntarily!)

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:16 pm 373. David Govett:

The American ruling class is lowering the cultural level of Americans to that of popular entertainment. Bailouts and sports are redolent of bread and circuses.

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:22 pm 374. Prof.H:

You’re not done yet. When we see something out of order but cannot place it, your keyboard illuminates the truth and we get our bearings again.

At some point we realize that honor is in the minority. It’s O.K. to be out numbered. Keep working anyway: Continue to appreciate the good, live sober, be kind to those who hate and believe that there are those behind who need us to stand our ground.

Maybe the divine plan was to allow a leader to be elected who would give the popular culture majority what they wanted until they choked on it. Suffering has purifying effects. Building up an immunity to current culture is probably the sign that you passed comprehensive exams in the school of life and can now teach others. Well done.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:14 pm 375. Shauna:

Hmmm so Victor Hansen is not into Vampire love affairs and comic book hero movies… who would have guessed?

Some rules for enjoying movies:

Don’t see anything rated higher than PG13.

The violence and sex over takes the plots and they are all preaching the same boring religon…leftist.

Go to the cheap movies after they’ve been out a while… you don’t get sucked into the hype. and you don’t feel as ripped off when the agenda turns out to be gay marriage or something you could not possibily have expected from the title or advertising.

Take a kid. The world is better when you are with kids. Things are new again. And the kids can explain the jokes to you…

There are actually some decent youth novel writers out there creating worlds and adventures without the agendas found in so much else.

If you go to movies to be educated you will always be disappointed. Go to escape.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:26 pm 376. Jason S:

Excellent piece Dr. Hanson. I feel the exact same way, and I’m only 32!! I always thought the Norman Rockwell image was at least something to strive for – simplicity, honor, family, country. It seems like folks back then knew that they didn’t know everything but were comfortable enough with it. Nowadays, everyone seems to think they know everything but is in a constant state of agitation. I’m not even a religious person, but I believe what is missing is a belief in something bigger than ourselves. God is driven from our culture and so we latch onto anything, even an empty suit we know nothing about, except that he is an excellent stage performer and has a winning smile, and we like stage performers with nice teeth. Just look at the popularity of shows like American Idol. Self esteem has become more important in our society than actually knowing anything, and so kids grow up believing they are somehow special and waste inordinate amounts of time believing they will become the next big stage performer. Why take the time to learn things like US history and math when countless people make millions of dollars playing make believe on television? Liberalism really is a cancer that has ruined the hard work and sacrifices of our forefathers. I shutter to think of where we would be if my gradnparents’ generation had learned self-esteem and sensitivity instead of honor and courage and family and country.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:41 pm 377. Ymr:

Yep, I zoned out of trite Hollywood drivel long ago. Reading classics fills the gap very well indeed. Classic just means that the work has stood the test of time and still has something to communicate. I guess I don’t have to lecture VHD on the value of classics. I have found Dostoyevski to be excellent on the issues of human nature and values. Icelandic sagas are a fascinating glimpse into the transition from paganism to Christianity. All the more interesting because the Nordic nations seem hell bent on reversing a 1000 years of morality with defeatism and appeasement.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:43 pm 378. redball6:

Sorry for the previous post. Stumble fingers hit the send button instead of caps. Well I’m old.
this is more correct – hopefully

Cultures have a Sociological pendulum to them, that seems to some to correspond the a generations rising to prominence. This one has possibly reached its amplitude early. the case for this could be the lack of depth of the sociological, economic, business and psychological leadership, or lack thereof on display. The political class, of both parties is bereft of ideas, locked into a interminable duel with its opposite over the value of what are now for the most part bankrupt ideas.

Where is the American Exceptionalism you might ask? You have only to look at the American military. Which we all ought to remember owes NO! Allegiance to any party or president. It owes and swears allegiance to serve protect and defend the “Constitution” against all enemies foreign and domestic.

Something new, of an American Kind will come from a different part of the cultural spectrum; maybe it’s the commoner “Palin” maybe not. But one thing is absolute. Many many folks, I am guessing its a majority have stopped listening. Both political parties now sit astride a huge political, cultural fault line. Its of their and our making. No one not VDH or an other certified, rational thinker knows when or what it will shake out, but the pressure will be relieved one way or the other and likely sooner rather than later.

May you live in interesting times? They have been getting ever more interesting since Nov 62. I suggest we all Check Six regularly on and about our freedoms and liberties.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:46 pm 379. John W Berresford:

Professor Hanson: You are so right. I grew up watching Walter Cronkite on CBS. He covered 12 stories in 23 minutes including commentary by Eric Sevareid. The show’s pitch was ‘here’s everything that has happened in the last 24 hours that you need to know about.’
I have watched the Evening News once in the last ten years, by accident. It consisted of four stories, none of which was time-sensitive. The Evening News had become 60 Minutes, just a magazine show.
This is one area where what we have abandoned is something that has ceased to exist. We haven’t changed, it has changed (and not for the better).
Always admiring of your writing and ideas, John B

Oct 20, 2009 - 12:09 am 380. stuart williamson:

Dr. Hanson: you say you don’t watch the news on TV, yet you saw Anita Dunn’s revealing expositions. Where? Is it possible that you occasionally turn on Fox News?

I did not read every comment here, but a lot, and I didn’t see any reference to that cable news service. It is far from perfect, but at least it presents fair news coverage, albeit with a conservative slant. It does deserve recognition and approval. If you watched only the MSM you would never learn of the corruption of ACORN or be aware of the nomenklatura of this administration’s Czardom. Or understand why they are trying to shut Fox down, and warning their sycophantic MSM to not pick up anything from that source, and to forgo direct interviews and accept daily taped releases. Surely one of the most chilling and revealing acts of a power-mad Socialist White House. A subject on which you will probably comment.

I cannot accept that you are quite as isolated from TV and print sources as you claim here.

Oct 20, 2009 - 12:27 am 381. mac:

Dr. Hanson,

I’ve nothing to add to the testimonies of those above but to say I’m glad to know I’m not alone. I may not be all that bright, but I’m smart enough to know not to voluntarily give my money to those who hate me.

I live overseas and current U.S. movies and TV make me ashamed and embarrassed to be an American. I bitterly curse Hollywood’s perverts for that.

Oct 20, 2009 - 12:30 am 382. Sulla:

What you all are doing is returning “to fundamental principles” as expressed in the classics.—Which from time to time is necessary to do.

Oct 20, 2009 - 1:35 am 383. Don L:

I suspect that the author didn’t drop out -just dropped back, to a earlier time. Sanity is what he seeks in an insane world -without God and morality as the foundation of our society, it corrodes as ours has. We slaughter innocent life -both young and old, elect an infanticide president, blindly or spirited by Kool-aid, we give up the freedom and rights documented in our constitution, we loathe the businesses that provide our standard of living and our jobs, we envy the rich and enslave the poor with infinite addiction to the government -lest they break free and become enemies of the power
brokers in Washington by accepting responsibility by throwing off the shackles of victimhood, We return those powerbrokers at a 90% rate though we excoriate them. We openly attack the Church and openly support hedonism and sexual deviation and now, officially drug use. Our media have prostituted themselves to an ideology and if it is ours, we sit silent about the travesty. The family, the building block of any society, is a thing of the past, marriage is old fashioned along with the cumbersome committment to another. We tolerate the taking over of our personal health and with that, the care we need in our final days. The culture of death has taken its toll -like the aztecs, we sacrifice the most precious among us to appease our false gods -the gods of convenience.

What this article is, is the documentation of life in America today -it’s final chapter.

Oct 20, 2009 - 3:26 am 384. LGMD:

Someone finally said it! You’ve given voice to my pain. Thank you.

Oct 20, 2009 - 3:34 am 385. Evan:

You’re doing a good job of describing how I feel about the last couple decades. I’ve not been to a movie in a good long while, I ignore the NYT and other such papers, I find little on TV worth watching (including sports), and I thoroughly enjoy reading books other than the latest best sellers or liberal screeds. I still debate politics with passion and vote my conscience and concerns, not what the way the major media tries to steer me to vote. I pick up litter, work to be polite and helpful to all I meet, and generally try and improve the world around me. If I’m detached from current culture, is that my doing or current culture leaving me?

Oct 20, 2009 - 4:09 am 386. Dr. M:

This is the way i have felt and acted for the better part of forty years, though I am not yet 60. I can’t stand the movies, tv, music, or similar aspects of contemporary popular culture. I indulge myself in serious religion, history, science, farming, and matters that pertain to the Country, traditional Western culture, and family. All has been politicized and de-sacralized. As a consequence, I am accustomed to only being invited someplace to dinner but once.

Oct 20, 2009 - 4:10 am 387. DB:

Amazing.
An accurate description of my philosophy and actions for the last 20 years.
I don’t feel a need to identify with what is portrayed as popular culture.
I’m doing just fine without it.

DB

Oct 20, 2009 - 4:18 am 388. Dan:

Come on you old farts – get with the program.

There’s amazing art of every form being created today. great art.

The problem is the quantity of crap that’s flooding the market. It takes work to sift through the massive amounts of input. However, their are more niche categories that mighty talented people are providing with top quality material.

Again, you have to look for it.

Has anyone here even bothered to explore the amazing world of interactive video games?

Incredible stuff.

Oct 20, 2009 - 4:58 am 389. Bob S:

Did I write this article? I couldn’t help but feel this was all coming from me, only I don’t have the talent to write something like this.

I found it somewhat comforting to know there are others who feel like I do. How many of us are out there?

Oct 20, 2009 - 5:03 am 390. Mike Moore:

Holy smokes Professor, I don’t remember writing this, although I could have (except for the excellent prose). Save for music (I prefer swing and the big band sound) my preferences are exactly the same. I used to be the biggest sports fan, but, no more. My favorite line when asked if I saw a pro football game is that I prefer team sports. For me it all started with Joe Namath with his lack of humility by guaranteeing a victory and Cassius Clay with his I am the greatest self aggrandizement. Haven’t been to a movie in I don’t know how long (I have gone to the theater a good number of times for musicals and comedies.) I am retired military (and still work for the Army as a contractor) so, of course, I stay on top of our wars. Even though I swore to myself to never watch or listen to our current President I still stay aware of what he and his circle of radicals are attempting to do. Thanks for expressing what I and I suspect many of us think.
p.s. I wrote this before I read other’s comments. Just like Fox News, it’s nice to hear others say what I believe in.
Sincerely,

Oct 20, 2009 - 5:23 am 391. Marcy Casterline:

Fear not Mr. Davis, you’re not a Horacian old fart. My son is 22 and has given up on American Culture these days. And he does not lean specifically right or left, yet. His rejection of American culture at this time in his life, when culture is most vital in forming ideas about life, is entirely based on the fact that he finds all current TV, film, and literature irrelevant and trivial. He laments many weekends that he and his friends can’t even find a movie that they want to see. Even the music scene now disappoints him.

Oct 20, 2009 - 5:29 am 392. Marie:

Yes. Haven’t been to a movie in 10-15 years; haven’t had a TV for 7 or 8. Why should I? About 15 minutes in, I feel as if I’ve been lowered in a tank of manure.

& oh so tiresome . . as you noted, it’s the same trite, thoughtless “corporation-military bad” every.single.time. If you want to see/read/hear something new and different, you need to reach back into the culture at least 80 years.

Every other movie that comes out is a remake, worse than the original. It’s as if Hollywood has no ideas of its own, so can only take something that’s been done before and trash it down. This, they call “brave.”

ah, well.

Thanks for writing this.

Oct 20, 2009 - 5:35 am 393. Rich:

To your closing sentence, you are correct.

Oct 20, 2009 - 5:36 am 394. ItMatters2Me:

Often you hear the old axiom “If you don’t vote, then don’t complain”. Conversely, the same can be applied to today’s media outlets. If you are continuing to fund Hollywood cinema, network tv, pornographic music, etc…then you have no right to complain about the content. Kudos to Mr. Hanson. If more of us were to purposely and completely turn off and tune out of today’s pop culture offerings, an entertainment market tailored towards decency would surely surface.

Oct 20, 2009 - 5:47 am 395. Class Clown:

If our so called “elites” would actually read a little John Keegan, they might not be so stupid anymore. His books will change the way you see the world. Try, in particular, A History of Warfare.

I sure do like yours, too, Professor Hansen.

Oct 20, 2009 - 5:56 am 396. logdogsmith:

I hear what you are saying, and it has a familiar tone. My parents have said the same thing since the late 70’s, and my grandparents for as long as I have been alive.

As for the 70’s, Obama can certainly be considered a cyclical return to Carter.

Regardless of my above observations, I agree with you.

Oct 20, 2009 - 5:59 am 397. D. Peterson:

I have the feeling like there is no modern culture to participate in. I can offer a ray of hope; there is a countercultural movement–Hmm…if there is no culture, can there be a
“countercultural movement”?–underway among many young people who are explicitly returning to earlier values and rejecting the (non)culture we find ourselves in.
One other point; my teenagers have discovered the original “Rocky and Bullwinkle” cartoons, and while watching them with them, I realized how literate they were–you actually have to have some knowledge of Shakesphere and have a real literacy to understand the jokes. This was offered to children under ten back in the 1960’s– how many young adults would understand them today?
My kids do, because they were homeschooled and private schooled–how many moderns have any clue who Shakesphere was, or what he wrote?

Oct 20, 2009 - 5:59 am 398. C. Craig:

I heartily agree with you. TV news is too biased and short-sighted – more coverage about an aging pop star’s death such as Michael Jackson, then about real stories that affect the world. Movies are all about either stupendous effects or rich people and their “problems”.

Oct 20, 2009 - 6:06 am 399. leslie:

Thanks you Mr. Hanson. I am only 48 years old. but the “coursening” of our culture has completely turned me off to Hollywood, TV, books – you name it. The only movies I enjoy anymore are the PIXAR features that actually tell a good story. Although, WALL-E was a PC, go-green nightmare.

I think the politicization of every aspect of our lives is what is driving many of us to turn off and drop out.

Oct 20, 2009 - 6:14 am 400. NR:

Thank goodness for Netflix…

Oct 20, 2009 - 6:15 am 401. Zena G:

Sounds like a lot of the changes we made 22 years ago in our family habits, never looked back.. the kids favorite movie is The Music Man. It’s nice to see there are so many others who have made the same decisions. I’ve felt like a freak for a long time because I’ve interacted with too many parents that immerse their children in pop culture without a clue as to the impact.

Oct 20, 2009 - 6:44 am 402. Kim S:

Oh thank you! Thank you! I am not the only one!! I dropped my cable TV in 1998, at the age of 37, and have not missed it since, and I now Netflix my classics. Since dropping cable, my life has been fuller, just as Victor described, and I am more aware of what is going on around me in the world; military, what congress is doing to us; global jihad, etc. More aware of real, interpersonal relationship. What a feeling it is to finally be alive!! And so fun to meet others like us, and in my church I’m finding “more like us” all the time.

Oct 20, 2009 - 7:07 am 403. Steve R:

Victor, I’m a fan of yours, but here you just sound…old. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Oct 20, 2009 - 7:18 am 404. Elizabeth:

Wow – amazing how many comments are on this story. I am glad I am not alone.
I am 28 yrs old, so VDH I wish I could say I remembered when it were different.
I am expecting my first child and already worrying about how to keep him or her from wanting to be like what they see in popular culture.

I have been listening to Miles Davis, Beethoven, with the odd newbie since I was 15. TCM is currently my favourite TV channel. My favourite movies that I have seen over the last month are The Manchurian Candidate (60s version) and Mutiny on the Bounty (30s version). TV is a little better if you want to try The Unit, Deadwood, Dexter – I think these may have been already recommended to you.
Books are in the worst state! Other than some current non-fiction, I only read old fiction. I am reading The Complete CS Lewis now after finishing Gone with the Wind. Have you ever done a column recommending novels?

Oct 20, 2009 - 7:30 am 405. greagj:

There are a great many of us out here who feel, think and live the same way.

Oct 20, 2009 - 7:34 am 406. Amy:

This is what happens when mere opposition to the culture becomes the culture. There isn’t much substance to replace what is being destroyed.

Oct 20, 2009 - 7:41 am 407. Tbone:

“How many of us are out there?”

You mean how many people don’t watch anything and then complain everyone is bad? Or don’t listen to music then complain it’s all bad?

How, exactly, does the bozo who wrote this post know everything in pop culture sucks if he doesn’t watch/listen to any of it?

Oct 20, 2009 - 7:53 am 408. James Simpson:

I completely agree (and just for some background, I’m a 35 WM, so I suppose that I’m not in anyone’s target demographic.) Nevertheless: I go to about 1 movie a year now. Everything that Hollywood produces is either filth, unwatchable, or unwatchable filth. I absolutely never watch network news (back in 2002 I vowed that if our local NBC affiliate told me about Brittney Spears one more time while I was trying to get ready for work in the morning, I’d never watch them again. The next day they mentioned her, and I’ve kept my promise since.) My only source of news has become The Corner, because I can’t stomach the smug droning of PC pieties from our media overlords. We’re doomed, doomed, to quote an apt phrase.

Jamie,
Houston, TX

Oct 20, 2009 - 7:56 am 409. David:

Thank you for your words. Much of what you said feels like recognizing a friend while lost in a crowd of hostile strangers. One great value of the internet is that it allows us to find each other, to build our own virtual community of people with shared values and similar interests.

I abandoned movie theatres in 1997. I once loved reading the newspapers every day but abandoned them in Clinton’s first term. I reject network news entirely. I often refer people to Spiro Agnew’s speech on Network news in November 1969. In the 70’s I thought Nixon/Agnew were more evil than Sauron so it’s strange to read Agnew’s words and find his thoughts so much like my own. But more mild and more civil than I express them.

But there are still a few pearls cast among the swine of pop culture. AMC cable has a series named Breaking Bad that I think is brilliant. It’s a tragic drama, watching a good man, in desperate straits, choose crime. And then watch him see the ugly consequences but accept it, growing used to it. Now there is a nice metaphor for America’s current pop culture.

Music was a passion in the 70’s and 80’s but I grew bored with the sameness of it by the 90’s. But with the internet I discovered some music forums for sharing links and found a treasure trove of music that is never played on NPR. In brief, the classical music of India and the Middle East has many beautiful things accessible to the Western ear. Indonesian gamelan is fascinating.

Oct 20, 2009 - 8:03 am 410. Deana:

Thank you, Dr. Hanson.

And thanks for the reading/author suggestions. I’m adding them to my reading list right now.

Deana

Oct 20, 2009 - 8:03 am 411. Anonymous:

“Laudator temporis acti” my ass. We’re just becoming adults and finally shucking off the Youth Culture that’s seeped into every cultural orifice.

Oct 20, 2009 - 8:12 am 412. Owen Glendower:

“I found it somewhat comforting to know there are others who feel like I do. How many of us are out there?”

A lot, I hope. Based on the number of comments, quite a few of us, at least. My wife read this article and said, “It’s like he’s been looking in our windows.”

As many people have said about the author of the “Dilbert” cartoons, “That guy must work here someplace.”

It could be said that we are “going John Galt,” at least for much of popular culture and entertainment. Like many other commenters, my wife & I have been doing this for some years, and have accelerated our withdrawal in recent years. The performance of the MSM in recent years, and especially its absolutely disgraceful performance over the past year, has made our withdrawal from that source of “information” a no-brainer.

Oct 20, 2009 - 8:16 am 413. Sam Holloway:

“…McCarthy lost and the Left won.”

That’s funny, but I thought that when McCarthy’s manufactured, reactionary witch hunt ended, the whole country won.

Oct 20, 2009 - 8:20 am 414. J.Oliver:

There are still some very good films that have come out during the past few years, they just don’t come from Hollywood. “Das Leben der Anderen” directed by Florian von Donnersmarck is one example. The British comedy “Hot Fuzz” starring Simon Pegg is a very good movie that spoofs the over-the-top action found in most current day movies. And speaking of Simon Pegg, he was in one of the very best movies to come from Hollywood anytime, this year’s “Star Trek,” directed by J.J. Abrams. When it comes out on DVD, you absolutely must see it.

Oct 20, 2009 - 8:20 am 415. Cindy S.:

Prof. Hanson -

Thanks so much! I feel the same way.

But in the current demoralization of our culture there are still some bright spots: “First Things” is a great monthly magazine, an intellectual and spiritual oasis in our sad desert.

Oct 20, 2009 - 8:21 am 416. Dblade:

214

Voting with the pocketbook like that doesn’t work. I’m sure you don’t buy hustler, but you and all the people like you not buying seems to have no effect on it actually stopping.

The reason why they don’t do real conservative films is mostly because conservatives drop out, just like the responses here, and idealize the past. They don’t want to take a chance and actually be in the culture enough to see what it offers.

234

You miss my point, the point was by dropping out you don’t make culture better, you just wind up subsidizing worse crap than what you avoid. You think the Dark Knight is too violent, and you retreat into Bibleman.

You also make it a lot harder for the few of us trying to actually shape pop culture in at least a more centrist direction because your dropping out doesn’t hurt anyone but the people who write books or make shows you might like. You are so isolated from the culture you can’t even tell when a good thing actually comes out unless National review or townhall carries glowing reviews.

271

They tried doing that with the Narnia films, and wound up really taking the starch out of the books. Walden Media for one is about as close to that ideal as you can find, but they have no nerve.

You can’t make films for an audience that wants the good old days back, and views everything in the light of dogma. You try, and you get stuff like all the dreadful remakes of past films, be it by Disney or others.

Oct 20, 2009 - 8:37 am 417. Manny:

VICTOR, YOU MUST BE MY LONG LOST TWIN BROTHER. I DROPPED OUT OF THIS CULTURAL MESS A LONG TIME AGO WHEN I FOUND THAT EVERYTHING WAS UPSIDE DOWN, SO I WENT TO SEE MY EYE DOCTOR AND HE TOLD ME THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH MY EYES, BUT THAT I WAS SUFFERING FROM CULTURAL EYE SHOCK SYNDROME, BETTER KNOWN AS CESS. SO I STOPPED READING THE RAG TIMES BUT USED IT FOR MY MACAW’S BIG HOUSE. STOPPED GOING TO THE RIDICULOUS MOVIES, AND A LOT OF OTHR THINGS. NOW MY VISION IS PERFECT. I SEE THINGS AS THEY REALLY ARE.
VICTOR, TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF.
MJ

Oct 20, 2009 - 8:41 am 418. Sunny Black:

I’m 32 years old and I’m shocked at how much of this parallels my own experience (down to the niners and lakers and music and movies, down to the rejection of my personal youthful crassness in favor of politeness for the sake of politeness). Word for word practically.

I used to think this movement away from culture would be bad for me, because I might no longer be able to identify with people of my generation. But after reading this article it’s confirmed something I’ve longed suspected: if that’s the way it is, then so be it. Because I’m happier without hollywood, TV, MTV, the preoccupation with professional sports (and the “heroes” I don’t even like). And I’m also through with the mythology of social liberalism & the hero-worship.

Amen, brother.

Oct 20, 2009 - 8:43 am 419. buddy larsen:

Tbone/407; i’d say the bozo who wrote the article experiences all he needs to know of pop culture –including the paltry returns on any digging for the rare gems.

But let me ask you, how can you know he’s a bozo unless you’ve read at least some of his work (not necessarily this column; which he has been offered as a place to muse because of the record established as a professional historian)?

Here, please allow me to offer you my own introducton to the perfesser, and then see if after reading it you still think he’s a bozo:

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson052402.asp

Oct 20, 2009 - 8:48 am 420. Sgt. Mom:

Hey, Elizabeth, if you are looking for old-fashioned, traditional-values-type books and you like historical fiction, then may I recommend my own? I have a novel about the first wagon-train party to make it over the Sierra Nevada to California with their wagons; “To Truckee’s Trail”, which is about the Stephens-Townsend Party got caught in the snow, almost starved, had to split apart – but they pulled through and survived, because they stayed together and trusted each other. Then I have the Adelsverein Trilogy, about the German settlements in frontier Texas, but on a deeper level it’s about coming to a new land, building a community, and becoming American. Available through Amazon, of course – even though I didn’t publish through the literary-industrial complex.

Oct 20, 2009 - 8:52 am 421. rustbelt:

You just got old, old and shriveled and defeated in spirit, if not in calendar years. There should be some shame in it, but it happens to everyone. Instead of embracing the present and supporting the bits and pieces that you might like, which begets more, you instead are embracing a mythical past that never existed at one time and not even seeking out new things you may enjoy, which would beget more things you may enjoy. I don’t like many things our culture has to offer, but I like even less this sense of defeat, decline and separation in which many of you obviously revel and flash each other like gang signs. Politics follows culture, you will not win the politics until you win the culture, and you will not win the culture until you can identify and love it and its participants, in spite of their flaws.

Oct 20, 2009 - 9:06 am 422. Bilgeman:

Let’s see, we have people here ranging from their mid-20’s to well past retirement age talking about their alienation from pop culture.

It seems to me that what is being unremarked upon is that as we grow older, our consumption of pop culture becomes less omnivorous and more refined.

Since we’re not being plopped in front of a TV in order to be baby-sat or to kill time between doing other things, we begin to expect something in return for the time we spend in such pursuits.
And we therefore become more critical and choosy about what we patronize.

Let’s face it, there’s always been dreck shoveled into the supply end of the cultural pipe, it’s just that the pipe was a whole lot smaller in earlier times.

(”Battle of the Network Stars” anyone? You youngsters Google it…I haven’t the stomach to relate it to you).

As I wrote above, the process of alienation is a pas de deux, and so as our tastes develop, we have less inclination to put in the time playing censor for ourselves. This does not mean, howver, that there isn’t quality stuff that isn’t being produced today.

Many here have mentioned “Gran Torino” and the “Lord of The Rings” trilogy as worthy of he time and money spent.

I would also add a trilogy of football movies:
“Remember the Titans”, “Friday Night Lights” and above the other two, “Invincible”.

All three well worth the ticket prices.

And certainly, if you dont think “Jacob’s Ladder” is a movie that your children and grandchildren will watch and take something from, then I’m not sure that you understand what “culture” really is.

Despite the increased demands on our time, we have to make a conscious effort to stay abreast and engaged with what our society is feeding our children’s minds.

Is this not also what Dylan Thomas meant when he wrote:

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

This is the way that even the childless can bequeath a legacy to those who come after them.

Get out of your bunker…it ain’t time for the retirement home yet!

Oct 20, 2009 - 9:12 am 423. William:

Even though I’m rather young, I must add myself to the list of cultural drop-outs. I have enjoyed a handful of movies in the past decade and none of the “music.” My favorite movies range from the 40s to the 90s, with only maybe half a dozen from the 21st century: Batman Begins comes to mind. Star Trek going off the air was one of the death-knells of American culture for me. After that, I stopped watching TV almost entirely. I go to the movie theater at most once a year, and usually not even that often. I don’t give movies the “benefit of the doubt” anymore, either. Why waste my money when I know from experience that 99.99% of the movies are going to be dreck, and that there’s no way something as ridiculous as “Transformers” could ever be entertaining?

One suggestion for music, though, is Jean Michel Jarre – the French electronic music artist. He was very popular in Europe and Asia, and enjoyed moderate popularity in America in the 70s to mid-90s. He doesn’t compose anymore, unfortunately, but I must recommend his music. It’s melodic, dramatic, and recalls much of emotional range that classical music has to offer. All the more impressive is that he does it with synthesizers. On that note, aside from Jarre and a handful of select 20th century musicians, most of the music I listen to is 70 years old at the newest (i.e. Rachmaninov).

Books? Whatever, most of what’s published now is a waste of the paper it was printed on. Again, I go back 50 or 60 to more than 100 years for my reading.

Oct 20, 2009 - 9:24 am 424. phil g:

Ditto for me. I still watch some NFL, but less than I used to. I typically skip the pregame hype and like to DVR the 1st half so I can buz through the plays and skip that blather, than watch the 2nd live if it is worth it.

No NYT, no network news…ever, no Time, Newsweek, etc. I sample the Internet and do more reading of books.

I’ve seen maybe 2 movies the past year and have no idea what is on network television even though I get satellite TV.

Oct 20, 2009 - 9:27 am 425. Paul Jones:

Professor Hanson, I appreciate your clear and frank self-description. Like the hundreds above, I too have acted in the same way.

I am a 33-year-old Army officer, and have deployed to various wars on several occasions. It was probably these long periods of isolation from Western popular culture, especially before the telecommunications infrastructure was developed down-range, which gave the impetus to my withdrawal. These days, however, it is deliberate. While there are jewels amid the rough, as some above have pointed out, I find it more worthwhile to listen to Bach than to search for the next Bobby Darin. (Though I do prefer piano interpretations of his keyboard works, as I’d like to think that I’m not a purist.)

When I think about this problem, as I do often, I recall an experience that I had in Sevilla, in 2004. I had returned from a second tour in Iraq, and gone there on vacation; it was March, and the smell of the oranges was lovelier after the desert. I found myself deeply affected by the cathedral of Seville — not that the crueller implications of its history escaped me. Walking into a domed side chapel and looking up, I was moved to tears. Two thoughts crossed my mind at that moment. First, “this was built by men,” and then “why don’t we build these anymore?”

On the most fundamental level, it’s not because we can’t, it’s because we won’t. It would be so much easier now, but we refuse. But in another way, no, we really can’t. We don’t have it in us, anymore, as a civilization.

Sadly, it’s still too early to see what’s next. I pray that it will be more like the gradual replacement of the Empire by Christendom, than the end of the Abbasid Caliphate. Then again, neither of those ever spent a century and a half gradually converting itself to nihilism.

Oct 20, 2009 - 9:34 am 426. Gringo:

298. biblio44:

244. IndependentDem: “…when Moho, David S, biblio44 and quesnay disagree (on anything, really), they are nasty and try to destroy.”

Well, Indy, when I run into a piece of right-wing, faux naive, thinly veiled self-aggrandizement, it’s hard not to react. I suspect that Dr. Vic is exaggerating some parts of his cultural abstinence, but I’m sure he’s telling the absolute truth when he admits to have “retreated inside some sort of 1950s time-warp.” So have so many PJM bloggers. Bring back HUAC!

Seems to me that you proved IndependentDem’s point.
Just wondering: what do select for your cultural partakings: literature, music, etc.? Certainly sneering at the knuckle-draggers isn’t your only pleasure in life. Right now I am listening to Oscar Peterson playing Cole Porter songs.

Oct 20, 2009 - 9:55 am 427. Idl:

Several times in the past, I’ve tried to turn off my tv and go without it, without success. I gave my tv away a month ago after I realized I was only watching Judge Judy, reruns of The Simpsons and Kitchen Nightmares. It was completely painless to do away with the idiot box this time. I haven’t had cable or satellite tv in decades(I couldn’t see actually paying to watch this drivel), so I was only watching network television. I have considered sending the networks each a letter thanking them for making it so easy to get rid of my tv because of their lousy programming!

Oct 20, 2009 - 9:59 am 428. Joe:

I don’t think I ever was on the cultural radar. I never saw much point to it. As a child and teenager, I focused on school, read, and participated in boy scouts. Now at the age of 29, I find myself busy enough raising a family, maintaining a home and earning a living that I barely have time to keep up with the news.

I have never attended a sporting event more consequential than a minor league baseball game, have never watched the Superbowl, can’t remember the last time I saw a movie in the theater, and don’t even get TV reception. In my lifetime I have probably spent well under $100 on music (and didn’t bypass the expense with illegal downloads). I’ve found that there are more important things in life. I have no regrets.

Oct 20, 2009 - 10:09 am 429. Nick:

I really enjoyed reading your comments.

I am 30 years old and in the last few months I have felt a yearning to pull away from what passes as “popular” to many people now. I feel bombarded by things and people that make me feel uncomfortable and offended. I thought I was one of the few that felt like this until a few months ago when I started searching the internet and found many others like me.

Currently, I am a scientist at a biotech company. There are very few people with similar mindsets as mine for me to interact with (if anyone does feel the same, they dare not let anyone find out…the only ones that speak out are the VERY liberal). Recently, I felt extremely sick to my stomach as we had to sit through a PAC talk where the head of our political action committee begged us to give part of our salary to our company’s lobbyists in Washington, DC, so that they could pay politicians to listen to them for a few minutes and “hear them out.” It’s not illegal but it feels dirty to me and I don’t want to be a part of such things.

As for current movies, I would be completely fine not to support Hollywood ever again. Two years ago my wife and I were going to the movies at least once a week. We stopped going as much after our son was born. I began to take notice of the morals and priorities of many of those that work in Hollywood and I became reviled at the thought of giving them more of my money.

Something has happened to me recently and I like it. I want to support those who have beliefs like mine and fight those who don’t.

Oct 20, 2009 - 10:20 am 430. Chris Ward:

Simple truth that no one wants to hear, but that a good friend told me half-way through this same sort of screed: “You’re just getting old.”

Oct 20, 2009 - 10:33 am 431. HLT:

After enjoying most of your writings, and agreeing with most of your viewpoints, this one sounds like the cranky old man next door who says everything in the old days was better.
He won’t go to baseball games anymore because there is too many distractions, he liked it before scoreboards and music.
The only good books, movies, TV shows were written 30 years ago.
I think every generation goes through this, thinking that what is going on now is much worse then it was when they were growing up (by the way, the only way I can see 50 is in my rear view mirror).
I don’t go to many movies either, because of the expense and convenience, but I still watch them. Have you seen ‘Once’ or ‘Gran Turino’ or any of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (a classic good vs evil series)? Sure there are lots of junk movies, but so were there many forgettable ones 30-40 years ago.
Cheer up!

Oct 20, 2009 - 10:51 am 432. sean:

I did not read all of the comments so others may have made this point, but whenever someone issues a blanket condemnation of all popular culture, it usually means they have just given up looking for the diamonds in the rough.

Popular music today is the same that it has always been: 98% of it is crap, 1.9% is fair to good, and that final .1% is transcendent. Check out Marah, the Roadside Graves, and Bob Dylan’s recent albums. The Roadside Graves are a local band here in NJ and they are great. They write fantastic songs and are excellent in concert. The only reason I know about them is because they live about ten miles from me. I am sure there are bands like that all across the country. Top 40 radio is crap, but let’s be honest, it was never all that great, even in the so-called glory days of the sixties.

Check out James Ellroy’s novels. While written in the hard boiled detective genre, they are as broad in scope as Tolstoy’s great works.

As for movies, the director Jim Jarmusch has made some wonderful films (Ghost Dog, Broken Flowers, Night on Earth). HBO and Showtime have done some long form series like the Sopranos and the Wire that are worth watching repeatedly.

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:03 am 433. Bill Nelson:

I offer my sympathies. And some advice.

I remember vividly when the Beatles broke up, a dark day. And really gave up on music in the early 80s. But I am back into it, there is a lot of good stuff, you just have to look. Thirk Eye Blind, though older, was a great band.

And there is some fun stuff on television. The Amamzing Race is entertaining and lets you pick and root for the “good guys”. And I love Deadliest Catch.

And I am now edicted to eBay. Am collecting books by and about Winston Churchill. Great fun.

But there are so many different cultural outlets. So many choices.

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:05 am 434. Greg A:

Amen, Brother Hanson, Amen. I feel it, too.

But I wonder: did our parents feel the same way? Did our grandparents and their parents? Are we nothing more than the “new grouchy old farts” we complained about years ago…?

Or, are we truly in a unique time?

I, most sincerely, hope the former…

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:09 am 435. Gypsy Boots:

Watching old movies and TV shows is definitely not “dropping out”! Culture is much bigger than the products of one generation alone.

But I do suggest that perhaps Mr. Hanson’s reactions are normal for anyone, in any time, getting closer to meeting his Maker. Trivialities drop away, and the permanent things seem both more real and in shorter supply than ever.

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:17 am 436. Rima:

There’s a modern way to watch those shows or movies you remember, and even some you don’t, without subscribing to Netflix: http://www.hulu.com/

There are thousands of options; the easiest way to decide what to watch is to open the “Channels” tab at the top. You’ll find some wonderful stuff, like a superb Billy Wilder movie, “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes,” in fact, there are thirty pages of movie offerings, including a modern comedy called “Shaun of the Dead” which hilariously spoofs other modern horror movies; a Retro Cartoons channel with cartoons like Felix the Cat; a Hubble Space Telescope channel, an Action and Adventure channel; a Science Fiction channel; and even a Cooking channel. All brought to you with limited commercial interruption by various sponsors.

To speak to the actual dearth of current cultural offerings, we live in a dumbed-down society. One of the funniest, scariest, and most trenchant observations of this phenomenon (I’m serious here…)is to be found in the 2006 Mike Judge movie, “Idiocracy.” It bombed at the theaters, probably because the viewers who saw it recognized themselves, and also because the studio had such a low level of confidence in it they refused to publicize it. The movie is set 500 years in “the future,” but if you watch it, you will know that the future is already here. There is even a black president, but he is a little different from the one we have now. Here is a clip: http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1526530841/ For the sensitive, there is some “language.”

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:25 am 437. LeRoy:

Well said, and right on! I haven’t pursued any of the dross that you describe for many years–and I feel healthier and happier for that.

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:28 am 438. homemom:

I never respond to online articles, but this one hit a nerve. We stopped watching cable TV in graduate school and have continued our abstinence as our family grew. We use Netflix for weekend movies and old television programs like “I Love Lucy”. Our children (elementary age) have hours of time for play, family interaction, Latin, Greek, music, fencing, swimming, tennis…. It’s amazing what you can do with all that “lost” time in front of the television.
The decay of our culture is absolutely obvious, whether you are strolling through the mall, flipping through the magazines at the checkout, or sitting on a park bench at your local park. Thank you for expressing what so many “awake” Americans see and feel.

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:37 am 439. len hrica:

your cultural analysis/analyses is accurate and similar(if not identical)with mine….i really don’t identify with this modern “no culture” culture….maybe i am a square…that being the case of alert self inspection….i am glad….uva65

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:42 am 440. BrookeW:

Yes – and thank you.

My finacee and I are not yet 30, and we feel this way, too. It’s heartening to know others do as well! So many serious, thoughtful, intelligent people can’t suffer a cultural vacuum forever.

We will make something better.

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:42 am 441. InstaPunk:

This essay is not worthy of you. Here’s an excerpt from our response:

“If you’re of a certain age and education, it’s so e-e-e-easy to withdraw into superior isolation. Today’s technology makes it a cinch. You can fall back to the favorite books of your youth or philosophical preference. You can rent old movies, old radio programs, use YouTube for the access it provides to classical concerts and whatever outdated pop music you can tolerate, and all the while you feel as if you’re up to date but making a reasoned choice to disdain what’s worst in popular culture. So you’re not a stick in the mud; you’re just tasteful and above it all.

“Which is a lie. It’s also running away, a cowardly evasion of responsibility. There’s no point in being educated and having knowledge of the supposedly finer things in life unless you’re prepared to use that knowledge in conversations with those who don’t have it. Wisdom is not defined as sitting in an empty room admiring yourself for what you know that no one else does. Wisdom is rather the act of daring that makes an old man stand up and call youngsters to account in his terms and theirs.”

The rest here:

http://www.instapunk.com/archives/InstaPunkArchiveV2.php3?a=1922

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:43 am 442. Kelly B:

I see a lot of commenters here asking, “if you have dropped out, how do you know it’s all dreck?” My husband and I have not dropped out – yet – but about a week ago, we looked at each other while surfing our 250+ cable channels (plus the full range of premium networks full of movies and even a stop in the “On Demand” section), and realized that, for the umpteenth time, we were about to spend an evening watching “How It’s Made” reruns.

My sister recently waxed rhapsodic over the return of “Survivor”. I don’t get it – there’s nothing there. And this weekend, lacking anything substantive to read, I skimmed through some of my daughter’s trash entertainment magazines – who are all these people? Are we seriously devoting paper and ink to a dysfunctional couple who just happen to have 8 children? Why are they famous?

Anyway, if you’re truly questioning whether all TV is dreck or not? Pretty much, it is.

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:44 am 443. Billy Beck:

This is The Endarkenment, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a unique event in human history, coming as it does in the wake of The Enlightenment.

Get used to it. It’s just our lot: this is the time of our lives.

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:48 am 444. Kaye Bearden:

I read your columns regularly..I am not an educated, sophisticated person. I am a 66 year old retired Texas wife, homemaker, grandmother who loves to bake bread, mow our small acerage, go to the coast and walk the beach….nothing in common with a man of your intelligence and education, right? Oh yeah, there is this thing called our modern culture, we both evidently dropped out! I can not write like you, so this is just a thank you for expressing my feelings about our world today, I am glad I am not alone in my feelings of todays “progress.”

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:52 am 445. Billy Beck:

“And really gave up on music in the early 80s. But I am back into it, there is a lot of good stuff, you just have to look.”

Having read several comments on this general plane, I would observe that they are missing the whole point. “Popular culture” means *not* having to go out and chase it down like a fugitive. I’m fifty-three years old, and I remember great popular music just raining down out of the skies on me all day long. (For instance, I would hear Yes, Stevie Wonder, and Johnny Winter on the same radio station within the same hour.) One didn’t beat the bushes for values in popular culture thirty to forty years ago. They were everywhere.

I haven’t seen a film in a theater since “Schindler’s List” and the prospects for my return are extremely dire.

I grew up on baseball, and I will never — ever — set foot again in a major-league park. I will not turn one glance in the direction of these punks who play pro football today.

I generally observe what people read these days with howling contempt.

On & on.

This is not America, anymore. I remember America, and I will miss it desperately for the rest of my life.

Oct 20, 2009 - 12:12 pm 446. Billy Beck:

“But I wonder: did our parents feel the same way? Did our grandparents and their parents?”

Let me put it this way: I remember my father’s original response to The Beatles. He was outraged.

Long before the end of his life, forty years later, he was a fan and understood what he was missed in the first place.

I guarantee you: I will *never* find value in what passes for popular music today.

Oct 20, 2009 - 12:16 pm 447. Allan Howerton:

I haven’t exactly dropped out. But neither do I pay much attention to most of the things cited here (I don’t follow sites like this. Someone referred this to me) as modern culture. There is just too much of it, it is too loud, too egotistical, too contrived, too void of values, too money oriented, and too boring. Enough already! Give me a good book, a chair in the autumn sunlight, a Beethoven quartet on the radio, a clear view of the bird-feeder, and a little time to work on my early-life memoir. But that is a luxury of the super elderly. My sympathies are with the young who can hardly escape what is all around them at school, the workplace, and wherever. If I were young again, perhaps I would understand it all a little better. But that is just an old guy’s (World War II veteran/author) perspective. I still have some faith in the country. Not everything is falling apart although sometimes it may seem like it. American history is filled with trying times and even quite a lot of cultural vulgarity.

Oct 20, 2009 - 12:17 pm 448. Confessions of a Cultural Drop-out « Benighted Comment:

[...] } A poignant essay from Victor Davis Hanson followed by some poignant [...]

Oct 20, 2009 - 12:18 pm 449. BLBeamer:

I’m 52 years old and I am following the same arc that VDH describes. I grew up on Motown and rock and roll, particularly The Temptations, The Who and Santana. I became re-energized with the New Wave artists about 1979 like Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, The Clash, etc. With the fading of the Motown sound and emergence of no-talent hip hop artists and rock poseurs, I never listen anymore. Now? All jazz all the time. Specifically (and mostly) 1950’s jazz. What a decade: Davis, Mingus, Monk, Coltrane, Adderley, Baker and on and on. If not always their very best music, certainly better than 99% of anything since. For example, I just acquired a CD of music by a mostly forgotten saxophonist, Shahib Shihab, and it is marvelous.

Oct 20, 2009 - 12:39 pm 450. Randy Merritt:

Wow, you’ve really hit a nerve here Victor. As I get older (I’m 45), I’m really beginning to see that some art, literature and music do not age well. Like a sugar rush, they were pleasurable for a short time, but did not last long. However, some art, literature and music have aged beautifully, like fine wine. Did someone say Bach? The Beatles? The Doors? Miles Davis? Duke Ellington? Billie Holiday? Howlin’Wolf? Beethoven? John Coltrane? Chopin? Patsy Cline? Hank Williams? Buddy Holly? Claude DeBussy? Shakespeare? Socrates? Charlie Chaplin? Buster Keaton? The list goes on (and I have to get back to work), but TAKE HEART! You don’t have to ingest any of the billions and billions of dollars worth of contemporary cultural sewage that are being produced each year. Instead, pour yourself a smooth glass of history, aged to perfection, and ripe with truth.

Oct 20, 2009 - 1:24 pm 451. TLM:

Tbone:

How, exactly, does the bozo who wrote this post know everything in pop culture sucks if he doesn’t watch/listen to any of it?

The same way he knows that what comes out the back end of a steer is bullsh*t. Check the source, check the smell and draw a simple conclusion. If YOU feel the need to partake in order to be convinced, dig right in sucker.

Oct 20, 2009 - 1:26 pm 452. Ghostface Killa:

Shorter Veneral Disease Hanson:

“I used to be a moviegoer, but thanks to 9/11, I am outraged by Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

But seriously, Syphiliticus Maximus, did you see Gerard Butler’s parody of 300 on Saturday Night Live? You might recognize yourself in it.

Oct 20, 2009 - 1:33 pm 453. Doug:

Churchill, as he often did, said it best in 1933. He was referring to England and it’s reaction to Hitler, but I think if fits.

Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians. But what have they to offer by a vague internationalism, a squalid materialism, and the promise of impossible utopias?”

Oct 20, 2009 - 1:33 pm 454. Tom Spurgeon:

This is hardly new. When my dad was in his 20s he listened to Frank Sinatra and Jacques Brel records and watched John Wayne movies at the Rivioli Theatre. When he was in his 60s, he listened to Frank Sinatra and Jacques Brel CDs and watched John Wayne films on AMC. I never expected my dad to get into Bruce Willis and Nirvana. As we all get older, we tend to revisit favorites and we simply have less time to go to movies, plays and club shows. To expect differently is a display of ego.

A great advantage we have over previous generations and a contributing factor to this is that it’s that much easier to find more great material because most material has a longer second life now. There’s a library mentality in several media other than prose. This improves the culture and it’s precisely that notion which is modern, not whether or not the latest permutation of the timeless, pandering, goofball wave of entertainment is your cup of tea.

I guess if you try really hard you can turn it into a depravity of modern culture argument, but there’s almost always a big element of cherry picking involved in doing so. I’d rather watch “The Andy Griffith Show” than “Community.” On the other hand, I’d much rather watch “Community” than “The Gale Storm Show.”

Oct 20, 2009 - 1:46 pm 455. Bryan Koenig:

OMG, I thought I was the only one who thought this way.

Oct 20, 2009 - 1:57 pm 456. Phillip:

Absolutely magnificent article. Brilliant. Perfect. It’s me too.

Oct 20, 2009 - 1:59 pm 457. Vader:

Modern culture is filth.

I watch football one day a year — Thanksgiving, when I visit family.

I also went to the movie theater just once I can think of in the last year. Star Trek: The Reboot. I was entertained, but only while actually watching. Didn’t stand up to reflection.

I’ve never read the New York Times. But I find I’ve pretty much lost interest in everything but nonfiction, so I wouldn’t be reading it now anyway.

I haven’t watched network television in years.

I’ve never watched any of the brightly wicked serials produced by HBO, either, except Band of Brothers. I shared a carpool for awhile with a fellow that watched The Sopranos on his computer during the ride, and I can’t see the appeal. I won’t even get started on Big Love, which combines soft religious bigotry with sexploitation.

Oct 20, 2009 - 2:00 pm 458. jonesy:

hey, the world moves on. get over it & get with it.

Oct 20, 2009 - 2:16 pm 459. Kent Stromsted:

I’m with you. I’ve given it all up as the foolish wasteland it is…except for Kansas basketball. I can’t give up Kansas basketball.

Oct 20, 2009 - 2:17 pm 460. darcy:

What a wonderful and life-affirming piece of writing, Mr. H.

There is hope for us yet; your article confirms it and so does the body of work left here by respondents.

Let me add my recommendation of another essay, though I know that by now most interested readers will have already sampled and savored this thread and may not even see my post. But if you are reading this, do yourselves an immense favor and treat yourselves to what I’d term a widening and deepening understanding of the reasons behind our disdain and impatience with America’s mass culture — in short, a frustration sufficient to leave us cold and uninterested.

Find the article at: http://www.nationalaffairs.com and scroll down to access “Looking for an Honest Man,” by Leon R. Kass.

Oct 20, 2009 - 2:21 pm 461. jonesy:

things aint what they used to be. thats because this is now. embrace it or get left behind

Oct 20, 2009 - 2:23 pm 462. jonesy:

carpe diem. not sit around in your rocking chairs about what could have beens.

Oct 20, 2009 - 2:25 pm 463. jonesy:

hanson didn’t drop out. culture moved on & left him at the road-side. bye bye.

Oct 20, 2009 - 2:28 pm 464. Tom Trimm:

WOW. I like it, and not just the edges but the whole thing. Maybe there is truth to the statement that “We are not alone”. You have hit my sentiments directly on the head. Something has happened to our America and I don’t much care for it either. Gone are the days when the average working person was proud that the rest of the world envied us and our way of life. Now it seems that the powers that be want us to believe everything that made us great somehow was wrong, racist, bigoted, or just pure evil and thus we must hang our heads for feeling proud. Why? I don’t get it specially when it seems like the most vocal of the protesters have benefited the most from what they condemn.

Oct 20, 2009 - 3:35 pm 465. Jeffrey:

#78 Kipling:

Might as well finish it, we want to know the end of the story;
Jeremiah 16 through 19
Thus says the LORD,
““Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths,
Where the good way is, and walk in it;
And you will find rest for your souls.””
(And this is the rest of the story)
But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
“And I set watchmen over you, saying,
‘Listen to the sound of the trumpet!’
But they said, ‘We will not listen.’
“Therefore hear, O nations,
And know, O congregation, what is among them.
“Hear, O earth: behold, I am bringing disaster on this people,
The fruit of their plans, (that ought to strike fear into all of us, if this nation is going receive the fruit of its current plans)
Because they have not listened to My words,
And as for My law, they have rejected it also.”

But there is hope in all this for the Lord did say in Ezekiel 9:4;
The LORD said to that person, “Go throughout the city of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of those who sigh and groan about all the disgusting things …” (He had them marked because he would destroy everyone else)

Are we not groaning within ourselves for the truth and for righteousness? We are, as most of these comments indicate, longing for better days, a straighter path and a better vision.
Well God does see and hear it. Our groaning may be our salvation.

Oct 20, 2009 - 3:57 pm 466. Anne:

Have often felt this way over the past 10 years. Used to love NY Times but gave it up in early 2000s, likewise Time. Hate the politics everywhere I go–most movies, TV, loads of books aimed at women. Tricky raising kids in this climate. We watched lots of Star Trek: Next Generation and we have a marvelous classic movie theatre in PaloAlto that we’ve taken our kids to Saturday nights and seen the best. Recently we’ve been watching the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles on DVD. It isn’t just for kids because the mini documentaries accompanying each entry of young Indi experiencing many of the big moments of the early 20th century are wonderful. A recent film in the theaters we enjoyed–Julie and Julia–for the loving portrayal of Julia Child and her husband Paul in the 50’s in Paris–not a chick flick but a fine portrait of a real marriage in a great era.

Oct 20, 2009 - 4:09 pm 467. mike:

I was with you until your ignorant assault on sports. There, you sound just like the NPR folks you cricize.

Oct 20, 2009 - 4:26 pm 468. Now and Then:

Welcome to the Digital Home . . . old folks ricking away . . . all alone in front of their computers . . . decrying the relentless advance of technology . . . pining for the goold old days when you could spend a quiet Sunday evening watching Arthur Duncan dancing up and down steps. Let me know if any of you would like to talk to Dr. Kervorkian. Geez, what a sorry, surrendering lot you are.

Oct 20, 2009 - 4:36 pm 469. buddy larsen:

Film-wise, here’s a bridge between old and new: “Watchmen” –by the same director as made “300″ –which was good on sense of epic but coulda used a little better style line between history and fantasy. “Watchmen” is the movie that your teen, 20 and 30 something kids pester you you to watch, saying, “trust me, dad, it’s good and it speaks to your generation, too.” And they were right –good, really good ‘movie’ movie, and great old-timey characters in Rorschach and the amorphous villain, the ‘one-minute to midnight’ clock ticking down to nuclear war with 1980s USSR.

Oct 20, 2009 - 4:48 pm 470. D.C.:

Mr. Hansen,

As a bookish nerdling female I opted out of the hideous Aztec Gold/Avocado/Burnt Orange 70’s and retreated to the plush 19th Century until the stink blew off the culture. It’s still a bit ripe, of course, but if you know how to read you have so much control over what you allow inside your mind. Once you decide to take control you’ll be amazed at how fast the din recedes.

Oct 20, 2009 - 4:49 pm 471. withthelast:

You’re 100% right. Only thing I’d add is that even if alternative means of occupying my free time became illegal (like some of today’s elites haven’t thought of having an approved list of “culture” and outlawing the rest), I’d resort to twiddling my thumbs before I read, watched or listened to NYT approved stuff. I value my sanity.

Oct 20, 2009 - 4:59 pm 472. Matt:

I used to like to watch ESPN to escape the cultural garbage, but now they are just another unaccountable bomb-throwing network.

Oct 20, 2009 - 5:54 pm 473. Gringo:

458. jonesy:
hey, the world moves on. get over it & get with it.

Many of us being old fogeys does have something to do with it. My grandmother watched Lawrence Welk. She did not put the Beatles on the record player. That supports your point of view.

While my father initially considered the Beatles a PR scam of untalented musicians before he had even heard them, he admitted in later years that he liked some Beatles songs. My separation from current music though, probably parallels that of my parents. Though I listen more to 1930s jazz of my parents’ generation more than I do to Boomer Era rock. If you call that my being old fogey, so be it, but I see it more as developing my own tastes.

My parents went to movies until they died. They watched TV. I stopped going to movies seven years ago, and recently stopped watching TV.

So yes, being old fogeys has something to do with it, but not all.

Oct 20, 2009 - 6:33 pm 474. Big Mike:

I’m right there with you. No TV since 1980 (but can’t help seeing it when visiting others)… probably haven’t been to a movie theatre since 1985…once all the pro sports went to 30 teams (WAYYYY too many) stopped following them in the newspapers… don’t even look at newspapers any more… for all of the same reasons as you. Can’t stand the sneering, snarling agendas of these people…

It’s great being outside the loop, outside the mainstream.

Oct 20, 2009 - 8:07 pm 475. Avoidance of Works « Screengrab In Exile:

[...] agriculturalist/pre-Christian reactionary Victor Davis Hanson boldly comes out of the closet as a non-consumer of modern culture. Hanson, who has long been the leading intellectual light of the ultra-conservative movement due to [...]

Oct 20, 2009 - 8:15 pm 476. Thud:

VDH….some of what you write rings true in England but luckily not to such a great degree….we should be warned and on our guard.

Oct 20, 2009 - 10:17 pm 477. Julia NYC:

The great thing about all of the junk in pop culture is that I don’t have to waste time on it anymore. Instead have been delving into the classics, i.e. literature, music, going to the ballet, museums, it is heaven. Really energizing and inspiring. Have started playing musical instruments again. Took up horse back riding. If pop culture was really great I’d be wasting time watching other people’s lives, instead of living my own. Thanks sucky pop culture!!!!

Oct 20, 2009 - 10:58 pm 478. They Quit Making Good Music When I Turned 30 » Evangel | A First Things Blog:

[...] [...]

Oct 20, 2009 - 11:02 pm 479. Inrptrn:

416. Dblade:
“you just wind up subsidizing worse crap than what you avoid”

Speak for yourself.

I have never walked out of a movie because it was simply “too violent”. I have walked out of them for being boring, artless, baseless, drool-fests. The movie Idiocracy is a perfect example of the “pop culture” except that move was a satire, and a most accurate one at that.

Oct 21, 2009 - 1:03 am 480. Vader:

#35: “I wish more people would use real names here. I don’t think anybody’s going to get you.”

Last spring, I had an official from our management come to my office, show me the biographical dossier he had built up by spending fifteen minutes Googling my true name online, and tell me in no uncertain terms that, if I insisted on participating in the vast Internet discussion, I was to do so under a pseudonym from now on.

What prompted his little investigation was that I unfavorably reviewed a book at Amazon under my true name and mentioned why my occupation qualified me to do so. Apparently the author got pissed and contacted my management.

It’s not paranoia when they really are going to get you. I’m not making any of this up.

Oct 21, 2009 - 8:46 am 481. Nash:

It amazes and amuses me that Victor Davis Hanson thinks that we wouldn’t really be interested in his views. Are you kidding me?!!!! I am interested in anything he has to write about! And I think these 400+ comments pretty much confirms that for the rest of you.

Oct 21, 2009 - 9:11 am 482. An over forty victim of fate:

Music: Where are the saxophones in the music they put out today? I have decided I will be buying real music from now on and not waist my money on what they are passing off for music.

This article hit home for us, because it is exactly what is happening in our own house. Thank you for making us aware of the fact we are not alone in this world of lost souls.

Oct 21, 2009 - 9:19 am 483. curtis:

I think you’re right about the gradual decline of culture, but I disagree with your thoughts on its timing. Movies in particular seemed to reach the apex of mediocrity at the end of the 90’s, when CG everything suddenly became available to anyone and the pure spectacle of what could be done became the driving force, rather than the ideas and story behind it.

But there’s been quite a backlash to that kind of movie. Michael Bay’s “Transformers” movies nonwithstanding, there has been quite the revolution, methinks, in Hollywood, even as the titans of the genre slowly find themselves less and less relevant. (Even Redford’s latest leftist agit-prop film flopped financially). Even the aforementioned Bay-induced CG-fests about giant robots are surprisingly pro-American. (While watching the latest of that series, my girlfriend leaned over during a montage of American planes jetting off a tremendous aircraft carrier on a mission to save the world from tyranny and evil and whispered “I wonder if Michael Bay is a Republican…” It is hard to argue that he isn’t, given how much he glorifies the U.S. military and villinizes the capitulation of our current Administration in the face of militant evil).

Pixar is making wonderful works of art that, even at their most “leftist” (see: Wall-E) still clearly glorify Western Civilization and the ideas behind it. (Even in Wall-E, their answer to the problem of massive pollution and consumerist excess isn’t the penance of carbon credits or reverting to a pre-industrial society, it is using human ingenuity and creativity– exemplified in the very detritus we leave behind– to build something heroic and more efficiently designed). “The Incredibles” is perhaps the single most “conservative” movie made in the past decade.

Quinten Tarantino– who I would think would be one of the biggest leftist auteurs– has recently made a movie called “Inglorious Basterds”, which has more moral clarity embedded in one scene than almost everything Hollywood has produced in the last twenty years.

And new media, too, is putting pressure on Hollywood. I compose music for a company that produces web-based entertainment (http://www.webserials.com if anyone is interested)– we were just picked up for a distribution deal, and Fox has been sending us feelers because they realize that the future of entertainment is going to be written not by the Clooney’s and Eisner’s of today, but in the new media that is currently springing up. And right now, that means that you don’t need the gatekeepers of the media-industrial complex in order to produce “conservative” media: you just do it.

All of this to say: I suppose I’m not “defending” current culture, merely suggesting that there is quite a bit of reason to hope for its redemption. The asinine and insipid culture of the left has a lot of cracks in its facade, and they’re dominance over culture is, I think, coming to an end.

Here’s to hoping (from a 25-year old who hopefully has quite a few years ahead of him) that it will fall, Berlin-wall style, very, very soon.

Oct 21, 2009 - 9:57 am 484. The Delivery Presents: Republican Rifts, Ursula LeGuin, Music, and Melissa!:

[...] Victor Davis Hanson’s Confessions of a Cultural Dropout. [...]

Oct 21, 2009 - 11:09 am 485. Daily Edition 10/20/09 « The Quantum Conservative:

[...] *Confessions of a Cultural Dropout, by Victor Davis Hanson. [...]

Oct 21, 2009 - 11:14 am 486. Ronsonic:

Yeah, I’m old, too.

Sure, there’s more to it than that. Modern mediocre cultural crap is worse that old mediocre cultural crap. Even the kids know this. More teenage guitar players are learning Led Zeppelin songs than Nickelback.

Oct 21, 2009 - 11:27 am 487. scott:

Caige at 358

Oh please. First of all the show is an insult to Tapping’s previous role on the Sci Fi channel and second, it just stinks.

Oct 21, 2009 - 5:45 pm 488. Pricklish:

Need I remind you – mindless, senseless juggernauts are meant to destroy through sheer fatigue. Evil needs no invitation.

Don’t hang up your mind, education, pen and ink just yet, Sir!

Oct 21, 2009 - 6:48 pm 489. Magister:

This article is a good example of the narcissism the author complains about. Why are we hearing this? Why do we care? I do not believe Dr. Hanson when he says he does not read the papers or does not follow pop culture. (I learned about the Serena Williams episode from this column!) Who mentions David Letterman more? Hanson or George Will? As for his not going to the movies, he is not the only one. That is why the industry is reeling and movie-houses are dying.

But let me ask this question. Were movies from the 50’s really that much better? Are movies today worse than the 70’s? Are Pacino and Hoffman really that good as actors? (Serpico anyone?) Was No Country for Old Men (a movie with Tommy Lee Jones) really not up to the standards of a John Wayne movie? Is Branagh’s Hamlet really not as good as Brando’s (overrated actor) old Julius Caesar? I have seen good and bad movies from every decade from the past 70 years. For every good movie, there are 40 bad ones. This has always been the case.

But, having said this, I could live with you in the 50’s, except for one thing: the Confederacy of Dunces. It is the best book written in the last 50 years. That was an author that could poke at the soullessness of modernity. Oh Fortuna, you harlot!

Oct 21, 2009 - 8:22 pm 490. Jack Marcotte:

Essential vdh

It is a great world if you don’t weaken.

I have come to believe it is a matter of energy. Just like the body thinks of food when it is hungry it thinks of the past and looks to not waste energy fighting unfamiliar windmills coming over the horizon as the body’s energy wanes.

Human energy wanes due to a “diet” that lacks energy. This is due to a loss of the ability to convert and create energy due to age. Energy itself is mindless and probably wasted on those young enough to not understand what is being said here.

It is not wasted in vdh. His energy is being horded and is looking back for us. He is by inclination and training a “historian” he is laying a track down for those that follow as they will. His is the guiding light–a contemplation of life and its culture and it is in front and allows us to look without seeing our own shadows if we keep moving forward and don’t keep looking backward. He is doing that for us.

Because of this all of the comments in the response to vdh have merit and truth. All illuminate the individual who comments. We know them by what they say. No pictures or explanations necessary. It is not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing it is a matter of knowing who they are.

Humanity is the fixed point on the river bank however and the arch of each human life, like a trunk floating in the river is simply viewing it from different perspectives while going down the river to merge with the sea. Such is life. Such is the spark that will merge with all life. Like heat.

For current world humanity the high water mark was the American Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the blood and human energy that went into it. It came out of Western Christian Culture. This is its manifestation and is the mirror or prism that allowed this light, an enlightenment to strike humans in America. It is America, it happened only in America. The best of humanity was allowed to thrive in America. Not Perfect but the best.

The current BHO’s now infesting America like the Maoists, the Stalinists’, and the Communists/Socialists are those individuals who exist in all humanity who move to submerge others within a group identity, or cult to acquire power that fills their own weakness–a greed or need for power over others. This weakness “sin” exists in all humans.

The BHO’s and their previous idea well springs have a greed to “lead” coming from a weakness of humanity that has taken control of them. They however are not as strong as the knowledge of Western Culture or “christian thought” that does lead the way—eventually of all humanity. Even in the face off piss ants like the Rev. Wright and his follower BHO. The racist money changers and extortionists like the JJ’s and AS’s. The idiot MSM personalities.

They follow a failure proven current “pop” culture profile that is unrecognized by them due to the Utopian brainwashing that is their daily bread, but it is the same old version of “greed” that is in every “man”. It pays them well so the rationalization to “feed” greed is greater than any weakened moral values they have. they do not recognize the non contributory part they play in America. They destroy America not strengthen it.

Their actions directly destroy human family support structures that have been weakened over the last 100 years by losing the robustness needed in more primitive preceding but more moral American society.

An early American society that could not afford to believe in a Utopian world and still survive.

They, the BHO’s simply appeal with Utopian rhetoric to a current American cultural that has created a low energy weakness of a significant proportion of existing Americans.

They, the BHO’s, can be successful until the eventual failure of this parasitic way of life.

For them, the BHO’s to survive: the host, America has to be robust.

For them, the BHO’s to lead not just survive, America must die— so they, the BHO’s will eventually die off like all parasites die when the host dies off.

They, the BHO’s are the blind alley that humanity goes up every so often in the course of history until the end comes and then “we” start over.

Even granting the BHO’s success to the extent of creating a coalition of victims and as such parasites , they are simply the footnotes to describe their eventual oblivion, until the human energy rises once again from the muck created by the blood suckers. By any other name they are the same.

It will get easier not harder to revive America–we have been their before and will remember what needs done. A vdh insures that.

Oct 21, 2009 - 9:08 pm 491. Mo:

Wow, it was sad to return here and see the comments creeping toward 500! I’ve read a lot of them. And again, this makes me sad.

If we’ve all dropped out of the culture, then who is left to save it?

Oct 21, 2009 - 9:09 pm 492. Robert Curry:

Dear Gylippus,
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
You are so right about America’s great contributions!
And here is a suggestion for you: you might enjoy Alfred Kazin’s God and the American Writer for a re-introduction to our great writers.
All the best

Oct 21, 2009 - 9:32 pm 493. Bill Carter:

I am delighted to know there are at least two of us in this situation. I am comforted by an immense collection of every genre of American and many European forms of music except for rap. That and reading fully classical writers of whom I had previously only read excerpts is satisfying in my declining years.

I conduct a few experiments in the sciences I know and love and though they are admittedly crude, given the instruments I have, they are progressing well and may see publication eventually.

I also do some amateur gardening and farming and don’t watch network news either. I prefer to get news from the Internet. It is better yet to read foreign newspapers in their own languages as it sharpens both language and analytical skills as I compare what i read from Honduras or Paris or Argentina with the little news I read in print from the US.

An observation I will make and it is probably unfair. I watched various news channels from the US for a week some time ago and found them all deficient. They failed to recognize a larger world out there. At any rate, that’s my view and those who disagree may be as correct as me.

Oct 21, 2009 - 10:09 pm 494. Evan Cowart:

VDH,

Reading your article and then some of the comments, it started me remembering my time in GB, totally for the most part, unrelated.

I was in GB in the mid 60’s, In 67, I was in Liverpool Street train station with my Girlfriend, I was in my Class A blues (USAF) and a Brit of very fine breeding rushed up to me, he was estatic to see me, he had been a fighter pilot in WWII and had trained in Texas, he wanted to haul me home with him. He had wanted to share with me his joy at having been in the US and all the good people he had known and shared time with in the US.

To say that I was flattered and probably would not have done real well, this guy was truly high up in their social structure and I felt embarrassed even being in that situation, just an enlisted E-4. I did not go with him as I was leaving very shortly for Vietnam, but he was most gracious and kind.

I contrasted this with the 2 years and 7 months I had spent their and the rather consistent resentment that Americans had to put up with from the Brits, especially the US Military. It was mostly jealousy and perhaps envy. We were not there to show them up or show them anything, merely to help them fight for survival.

The contrast between his appreciation for the US, even love of us for what we had done for the Brits and the world. Most Americans don’t want much, just a bit of appreciation for all we have left on their shores defending them, giving our all. Reminds me to some degree of today in the US.

I am 64 and a foreigner in my own country. I haven’t had a working TV in some years, got one now, will be watching FOX and DVD’s when it is hooked to cable, news from the internet. Drudge, Lucianne, American Thinker and others of that sort.

Oct 21, 2009 - 11:27 pm 495. Greying Wanderer:

The whole Anglosphere is starting to feel very Wiemar-ish. Tragic really.

Oct 22, 2009 - 1:20 am 496. distraught:

its all true

Oct 22, 2009 - 2:33 am 497. Aunt Ralph:

Try the Gregory Brothers’ Autotune the News.
It’s a clever idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0OzxvClwoU

Oct 22, 2009 - 3:58 am 498. Rather Read:

I used to be addicted to TV and movies, but I haven’t watched TV with any regularity for some time now. I watch Dirty Jobs, and some of the shows on the Food Network, but otherwise I stick to my collection of DVDs. As for music, I pretty well avoid most contemporary music – it’s so manipulated. Ella with only a piano accompanist could make magic, but without studio help, Britney is nothing.
Even my beloved books are getting filled with PC, so I stick with the authors of mystery and techo-thrillers who tell a story and leave the politics out of it (and I am talking to you, Stephen King).

Oct 22, 2009 - 4:24 am 499. patty k:

Ditto. You described everything I have been feeling for the past ten years.

Oct 22, 2009 - 4:43 am 500. BettyBlue:

Sorry, Jonesy; I’m not about to get with it, and start wasting my life watching, “John & Kate plus 8″, “Oprah”, endless shows about cake baking (”This is the moment of truth now. . . he’s putting Snow White at the top of the fairy tale cake. . . will she stick, or will it all collapse, like a poisoned apple?”)

I don’t care about the “Girls Next Door”, or Tila Tequila’s love life. Not interested in the Kartrashians, creepy L.A. tattoo artists or fat guys who run a pawnshop. I’m not gonna watch any show, where the dialogue consists of, “And then she said (BLEEP!), so I said (BLEEP) you, bitch, and Kimmy said ‘(BLEEP!)’ and I’m like, Oh, (BLEEP) off, everybody!”

I don’t like most current movies, don’t like rap. Old fashioned? Old fogeyish? True, but it’s really nice to have an actual life, and not be concerned about that stuff. Being cool, and with it, is highly overrated. Also, it’s only something silly high school kids worry about.

By the way, I suspect many of popular culture’s defenders here realize themselves how empty it is, hence their thin-skinned overreaction to Hanson’s criticism of it.

Oct 22, 2009 - 6:21 am 501. Sean:

I’ve noticed the same thing, but I don’t think of it as withdrawing from popular culture,
as much as the fragmentation of popular culture, which has happened since the Internet, and also because of cable TV.

Those of us 40 and older are conditioned to norms like ABC/CBS/NBC in TV and radio,
and the big newspapers and movie studios. In that world, culture was centralized and
worked in broadcast mode, and everyone partook because there just weren’t many choices.

So some if it is just due to getting older – I don’t read fiction any more, regardless whether it was written by authors modern or ancient. But don’t discount the fragmentation of modern media, which affects everyone, young and old, and the
rise of participatory entertainment, like online gaming, which takes the gloss off
of those arts that place their audience in the role of a passive observer.

Oct 22, 2009 - 8:58 am 502. octogalore:

VDF — I’m a fan, and I identify with your thesis here.

However — when mentioning actors, and you mention 22, one would think that there were only one gender. Out of 22 people whom you felt had worth, why no women? What happened to Vivian Leigh, Katherine Hepburn, Anne Bancroft, Sophia Loren, Ingrid Bergman?

I’m a former liberal, current libertarian who voted Republican in 08 and plan to do so in 2012. Folks, we need the female vote.

Oct 22, 2009 - 9:01 am 503. Frank Miller, conservative comment-thread commentator | Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources – Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment:

[...] online hangout were first widely noticed this week, when the cartoonist and director responded to a Hanson post complaining that pervasive liberal influence and cultural decadence had driven him away from the [...]

Oct 22, 2009 - 12:01 pm 504. SOM:

I’m 57 and recently bought a 1950 wooden boat which I will lovingly restore while ignoring the narcissism all around. Maybe when I emerge in two or three years it will be the 1950’s again…

Oct 23, 2009 - 8:34 am 505. Ann:

I haven’t read the 500+ comments, so I’m sure this has been said before…but the culture just seems so boring to me…so jaded and superficial. Albeit surreal–read the other day that the Pill is supposed to have affected women’s romantic preferences, so that is why we have this group of amazingly unattractive leading men. (I was just thinking this while watching “The Duchess.”) Go figure.

More than that, however, the culture seems stoopid, uninformed and without nuance. The great artists understand nuance, the shades implicit in life and in human beings. Also that life is a gift which holds both good and evil. This seems missing today.

In addition, the media culture is utterly uninformed and incurious. I sometimes think of this, for example, in regard to New Age dogma, which mirrors old streams in American life. It critiques traditional Christianity, with no knowledge or interest in learning about it. and it is itself completely dogmatic.

The media culture also seems to have no sense of the absurd, which is probably why the New Yorker humor column has become the oh so painful non humor column.

I live in Maine, which has been overrun by liberal totalitarians in the past 20 years, who could care less about he unglamorous realities of the state. I find them extraordinarily childlike. In some ways, i have given up on the depiction of the culture. I’d rather just live in it. There, I find grace, hope and peace.

Oct 24, 2009 - 9:47 am 506. Tom KY:

I’m 38 and have already dropped out of pop culture myself so I don’t feel this is a late life trend of longing for gentler time. Today’s popular culture is just vapid and empty. Plus its been a bad year for movies. The one bright spot I’ve found is the independent music scene. Indie bands are making some very good music these days but are not popularized by mainstream distribution.

Oct 24, 2009 - 7:36 pm 507. Nat Hooper:

I am interested in your views because you express MY views so much better than I can.

For a long time now I’ve been thinking that the way our society is weakening is just following the history of the Roman Empire and, I’m sure, other major societies of the past. The time came when they would rather watch Christians being slaughtered by lions than go to war.

Now history says it’s out turn. We grew into greatness because of our honesty and determination to do well, no matter what it cost, AND we earned the freedom to enjoy it. In our safe freedom we became soft and bored, needing more and more explicit excitement in our recreations. These became more important than the dirty work needed to keep the barbarians at bay. No longer constrained to consider a glimpse of stocking as shocking, we now think it OK to enjoy skirts too short to cover anything, and it’s less arduous to talk to our enemies than kill them.

Oct 25, 2009 - 2:45 pm 508. Walter Starck:

While the dinosaurs of pop culture do sppear to be suffering from a terminal malaise, a rich new cultural ecosystem is also evolving. It is networked, global, real time, divergent and vastly richer in intellectual and artistic content than anything which came before. Although fostered by the internet it is extending into the whole of society.

The dying throes of a degenerating pop culture are only an interesting side show. The real action is in the rapidly emerging new cultural ecosystem. As a septuagenarian I find the evolving culture vastly more stimulating than the old pop culture even at its best.

Little more than a decade ago this article and its global conversation of comments could not have taken place. The mid-twentieth century phenomenon of a monolithic pop culture mediated by a few channels of movies, radio and TV was but a fleeting special effect in our cultural epic. The current scene looks much more interesting.

Oct 25, 2009 - 2:46 pm 509. Meridia:

You make interesting points about the train wreck Hollywood and the popular music business have become. However, while I understand and sympathize with your odium regarding the current state of contemporary culture, I think your writing is imbued with a whimpering and helpless frustration that often walk hand in hand with what my generation call “posers.”

Don’t get me wrong- as a California highschooler I follow your blog religiously to combat my classmate’s farcical and fake liberalism, and I still think that you are among the most interesting blogs I have read (forgive me for ranking you alongside my beloved music blogs), but despite your intelligence I don’t think you’re looking hard enough for good literature or music.

No, we don’t appear to have new Mozarts, Bachs, Coplands or Bernsteins, but the music industry is not as depressing as you seem to believe. Obviously you won’t find anything fantastic on the top 100 charts, but this isn’t because society is rushing down the toilet but instead because this is the music of the current generation. If my grandparents are a good example (not to make generalizations about seniors) not many in their generation have email addresses, let alone iTunes accounts. This means that the majority of the people contributing to the iTunes sales (which I assume is how they determine top spots, at least at this music vendor) are in my generation; this means that they are the ones who can list the top ten rappers and singers.

Don’t despair for my generation; there are places besides iTunes to find good music. Remember that we are interested in different types of music. It will be our mark. Wagner, The Beatles…Lil’ Wayne. Okay, it doesn’t sound great to me either, but in lieu of moping about the current state of affairs, let’s be the anti-Obama and work on concrete actions as opposed to rhetoric. Let’s hear some suggestions on how to find good music instead of complaints about how generation Y is taking culture to the devil.

Oct 26, 2009 - 6:54 pm 510. Jim:

Two words: old fart

Oct 27, 2009 - 1:02 am 511. Micha Elyi:

InstaPunk (441) groused that turning away from the firehose of kultursmog is “running away, a cowardly evasion of responsibility.”

Nice try, but no one is obligated to throw pearls before swine.

In other comments, especially laughable were the petty cries of “you’re a bunch of old farts” from the neo-nihilists. Forgot Bruce Springsteen was moaning 57 Channels (and Nothing On) waaay back in 1991, didn’t they?

Oct 27, 2009 - 10:53 pm 512. On the Culture War « Pond’rings:

[...] trick in the book they can muster up to destroy them—makes you just want to drop out, as it were. Victor David Hanson has an article on just this idea, discussing how he doesn’t watch television any longer, and he hasn’t watched a new movie [...]

Oct 30, 2009 - 11:03 pm 513. Arcterra:

You nailed it. I feel exactly the same.

Nov 15, 2009 - 10:49 pm 514. Ralph Kramden:

I’m the same age as Prof. Hanson. I’ve withdrawn from the popular culture pretty much the same as Prof. Hanson. One other thing about today’s culture that has driven me from it is that political commentary keeps popping up in the most inappropriate spots. Simply put, when I watch a movie or read an article about sports, I don’t wish to be subject to some one’s political rants. I’d say this even if I were watching a movie or TV show where the political comment was ostensibly conservative, e.g. ridiculing Joe Biden’s stupidity.

Nov 19, 2009 - 7:53 pm

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