10-009
WE’RE
NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE
I
feel your pain. Do you feel mine? I bet you do. Yes, I refer to that
niggling noggin splitting pain, that bone gnawing anguish, that teeming
existential angst we experience whenever we face The Ugly Truth.
You
know what I speak of, for like my humble self, you too are a highly discerning
individual. Intellectually aware, artistically appreciative, cultivated,
indubitably enlightened to a “T.”
Kindred
souls you and I, we folks of gentle nature, we who cringe at double negatives
and dangling participles as if they were sidewalk spitting or public urination.
(They might as well be, you say!) We, who are dumbstruck by blatant ignorance
as if it were a whack to the side of the skull by a cricket bat; we who recoil
as garish tattoos and vile body piercings mar the landscape like graffiti
violates a beautiful city’s grand architecture. (May I suggest a stiff gimlet,
heavy on the Rose’s?)
The
Ugly Truth cuts like a cleaver. Civilization (such as it is) faces extinction
due to man-made Global Deforming of the Culture. Dial 9-1-1 pronto, fellow
citizens! This pop culture pollution is no mere befouling limited to innocuous
pockets of mobile dwelling deviants, multimillionaire shock jocks, slum
landlords, porn stars, scum lawyers (excuse the redundancy), horny politicians,
the prison populace, Hollywood wannabes, network TV executives and New Jersey
housewives.
Oh,
no sirree! That humongous slick of putrid multimedia excrement flowing
mainstream to our pristine daisy adorned doorsteps has transmogrified entire
gaggles of society. An invasion robbery of our finer senses and inherent good
taste is imminent. Fortify yourself, my friends! (It will be prudent to
stock up on adult drink.) Great art - classical music, literature, painting, philosophy,
poetry - is threatened - nothing is sacrosanct.
Hear
the tortuous drip, drip, drip? Plop, plop, plop? I share your despair. Numbed
down to drooling Neanderthals, we will likely drown in an incessant data deluge
of toxic “D list” celebrity drivel, insidious social sell and narcissistic
blah, blah, blah. Pray tell, wouldn’t it be lovely if technology elevated
culture instead of infecting it like an STD?
What
we have now is Culture with a “K.” Good grief, the krappy (pardon my French)
Kardashians make poor Paris Hilton look like Grace Kelly. Hussies carp, kvetch
and curse ‘til the cash cows come home to their leopard decorated Beverly Hills
mansions, tacky TriBeca penthouses, gauche South Beach luxury condos. How I
ache for a culture that ennobles the soul.
The pain. The pain. Will it ever end? Compadres, unite. Cork open that precious bottle of Bordeaux Lafite-Rothschild ’85 you’ve been saving for such a crisis as this, put your sorry feet up on a plump ottoman and immerse yourself in Shakespeare, Mozart, Flaubert, Schumann. I’ll set society’s GPS for civility, refinement, urbanity. I fear they are, alas, lost somewhere over the rainbow in cyber space.