American Renaissance

Sir:

Since 1999 I've been "backstage" at virtually every
awards show, helping out with logistics. This year,
invited to be a part of the AMA's I declined. I was
"busy." It is significant.

Having watched episodes of the Ed Sullivan show
and having seen Carson in his twilight I decry
the decline in American popular culture. The very
same reasons the Banking sector crashed are reasons
because of which people like me are increasingly
too busy to take part in previously sacrosanct activities.

The culture of voyeurism, the rush to view someone else's
reality is nauseating. And just as the bankers, because
it seems a good investment, cheap and easy to make and without
having to pay those who truly make drama come to life--writers--
the executives have decided that the new format de jeure is
reality TV. And so American writing has begun to suffer and
American culture has begun to decline. That the show
Arrested Development had zero ratings while foolishness
like "Life with Jon and Kate" or whatever took millions in
is proof of my point. This IS an American decline, and though
it has been heralded in times past, never by America's favorite
son. To the extent that we can do anything about it I have
used what powers I have to dissent in the industries of music
and screenplay activity. But my powers are as limited as my
talent is not. Now being taken seriously in places like France,
people like myself wonder what has happened to the edge that Freedom
gave America. It now seems that freedom is an experiment vastly
on its way to failing, for to see how many thousands of our children
expose their breasts for beads or demonstrate illicit sexuality for
the camera, dousing themselves with champagne and beer, reflects
a critical divide in America's trajectory. What ever happened
to the energy that came from the Sixties and Seventies and even
early eighties and nineties. Me, a product of the nineties, will
not move forward with American culture if it is a rejection of
morality and the embrace of stupidity and crass foolishness.
But then I'm only one. Then again... I'm not alone.
g