>i don't think the outrage expressed here was anything other than elitism.
I'm with John on Yank take-away stuff (dunno about Starbucks yet, but I will, I will ... ). It's awful food - tasteless and not particularly good for us. Its appeal lies in the fact we're so busy, and the local vendors don't have drive-throughs and can cook the food only after we order it (nor do they have the economies of scale, for that matter). After a while, the local vendors are ex-vendors. And our kids get born into the new reality and take to the filthy muck. I didn't see a McDonalds until I was thirty, so I'm pure. Not so my youngest, unfortunately.
One thing I notice in a lot of cultural studies people is the logic of 'if the ordinary people consume it, it's undemocratic and elitist to look down on it'. The consciousness of ordinary people is like that of everybody else in one important sense - it's conditioned by our being. And our being ain't all beer and skittles. It enforces and encourages just the sort of bland standardising crap Carl was on about earlier. And that's what we're talking about, for mine. The remorseless decline of human experience and sensation ...
Cheers, Rob.