America=The Roman Empire 2673

Well, the US popular culture stinks. Big cars, fast food and the sheer banality of Hollywood and the pop music indistry are the worst side of American culture. We have rich local cuisines that are the equal to anything anywhere in the world: Louisiana and the Chesapeake bay come to mind here. But do we export those? Not really. We used to write marvelous popular music. Ever hear of the American Song Book? Songs from the likes of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rogers and Hammerstein and Hart, Lerner and Lowe, Sammy Cahn, etc. Really great stuff that is still performed, still listened to and still loved all over the world. We used to make great movies too and Hollywood films were the world standard. When the big studios were producing films, we turned out movies that will last forever and stars that the whole world wanted (still wants) to see. But now, Hollywood turns out mostly junk where the whole idea of entertainment has been corrupted into some mindless thrill-ride where the only thought to story is how to get the hero and injectione from one gigantic piece of eye-candy to the next, and the ony character development is getting to know the main characters' names. I'm really sorry that we export this crap to the rest of the world, and I'm actually ashamed of it. OTOH, fast food, mindless movies, music and TV wouldn't be successful in the rest of the world, if the citizens of those countries didn't want it, so its not ALL our fault. It is our fault for allowing our culture to devolve to its present state, but its your fault for buying into it.

-- George Graves The health of our society is a direct result of the men and women we choose to admire.