Death of Culture

Steyn has a pretty good post in the New Criterion about the 20th anniversary of Alan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" and Kid Various thinks he should dust off his copy and take a re-read.

Specifically pointed is the fact that, unleashed from the moorings of the western canon - contemporary popular culture has no means of reference. If you haven't read Corinthians, you can't possibly understand this:



And you certainly can't understand the brilliance of "What's Opera, Doc?" That thing is a six minute long Wagner joke.

This is why so many of our mad popular reference skillz go so underappreciated. It's OK though. We're not posting for you and the rest of the hoi polloi. We're solely amusing ourselves.