>_Popular Culture_: I suppose on your pop culture list this has been
>discussed thoroughly, but just to give some preliminary focus, let me
>suggest that the _core_ of popular american culture _at this time_ is
>the belief that the invasion of Iraq is a legitimate and necessary part
>of the war on terrorism.
>
Let me be the first to disagree with this postulate, then. I don't think
that such a statement could ever serve as a "core" or "popular American
culture," at this time or any other. And given the degree to which our
culture obviously dissents from that point of view, I wouldn't say that
that's a 'core' at all. At best, it may be a widely held belief, but
it's nowhere near as much as 'core' as, say, belief in the First Amendment.
And Carrol's statement begs an obvious question: if support for the invasion is the current 'core' of popular culture, then what was the 'core' _before_ the invasion?
>I'll leave for later a discussion of "pwoggies" (or "the left"), but I
>will suggest that this alleged contempt for popular culture, if it
>exists, should be ascribed to "intellectuals" in general, and that
>"intellectuals" and "leftists" are by no means identical categories.
>
Again, I'd disagree. It seems to me that the disdain for popular culture
arises more from a kind of tribalism (dislike for cultures uinlike one's
own) and snobbery. I don't think it requires any special degree of
intellectualism to fall into this kind of snobbery.