AS BAD AS ALL THAT?

Is American culture going to the dogs? Morris Berman thinks so: His book “Twilight of American Culture” paints “a copious chamber of cultural horrors: corporate publishing and the death of small bookstores, New Age platitudes and spiritual nostrums, ignorant college students and their jargon-ridden post-modernist mentors … you get the idea. For blame, Berman trots out The Usual Suspects: globalization, corporate domination, endless greed, insidious marketing, the media circus, and of course, the stupidity and gullibility of the American public.” Really? – The Idler 11/27/00