A brief addition to the last post.
It's the fucking poor you idiot. The beauty produced in desperation, by the poor,
whether it's The Carter Family or Snoop fucking Dogg.
Kultcha as a category covers not only Snoop's phraseology, but the shape of Matthew Ynglesias' glasses, the arrogance of Brian Leiter and the fastidious professorial mannerisms of Juan Cole and Jack Balkin. Culture is the MANNER in which we do things. It's your blue jeans and my unshaven face. Sometimes I think this fucking country is divided between those who spend all day looking in the mirror and those who've never seen their own reflection.
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update: It just gets worse.
Can the woman say nothing about class?, about the contradictions inherent in individualism?, about the fact that white Brooklyn, and Staten Island, if separated from the rest of the city, would qualify as red?
The absolute inability to reflect, to question one's own sense of...
anything.

My last night in L.A. I'll miss it but I'll be back soon. It's a beautiful city. The traffic is beautiful, the smog is beautiful; and the greenery, both man made and not, is amazing: the ten minute ride from the mountains to the sea. The future is terrifying, but beautiful. It's enough to make me a fan of J.G Ballard.

What's interesting to me and attractive more than anything is the sense of absurd democracy. This is not a city of aristocratic corruption, or even its pretense -and that's all New York is good for these days- it's a city of popular corruption and popular decadence. Everyone knows where the smog comes from. There's no one else to blame. And this understanding permeates the place. I almost want to move out here, just to buy a car.
I feel tempted in ways I've never been. Like Emil Jannings howling at the moon.