Joe wrote: "Anti-intellectualism", or a distaste for learning mostly through reading, isn't limited to some people from the working class. Our own dear blue-blood President is a well-known example of that.

Yes, and as I observed earlier it seems to magically transform him in the eye of the general public into what you call " a regular guy" notwithstanding his wealth and privilege.

God forbid that your leader should be one of they smart alecs!

 ; )

brendan wrote: Education is never its own reward, unless you are being educated on fixing air conditioners.

This is what happens when you worship Mammon.

Stuff ethics, social improvement, or the quality of life - does it make money - if not forget it

I don't see why it HAS to be exclusive, that either you're a slope-brow or an academic, in the view of the culture of America. Yet in the images we produce, that's what you get.

There doesn't seem to be any real middle ground. And it isn't A is A in this case, because most intelligent human beings are actually a combination of high and low taste. Most people are not really caricatures. But there are plenty of cliches. I think people choose to be a cliche. They grow comfortable with it, they have chosen to either defy the world or accept its terms, but in terms of culture, everyone wants to gravitate to a persona that is acceptable to somebody, so they will not be alone.

It's tiresome to see another cliched character in another dim film, a cardboard cut-out only serving to illustrate a tired premise we already know. Novels often follow a similar adherance to broad strokes on character, so no one is anything more than what they seem. If you're an ignorant mechanic in a film or book, that is what you are. If you're a power broker, you're a shallow slick-haired consumer honky. And that is it.

The problem becomes when regular human beings assume that their lives have no meaning outside of being a "character", yet they demand respect. The image becomes a reality that is reinforced by television, "reality" television at that. People who deny the power of television is completely missing the point here. People who deny the power of the images we produce, showing fathers as buffons, women as whores, children as savants, or drug addicts and murderers as deserving respect and admiration, have caved to the notion that their "reality" is the only reality. They are denying the power of the human mind to take an image and make it become real.

Our "characters" are out of hand. It's like some bizarre virus that has spread over the planet, where there is us, and there is our Dark Half. Not that the Dark Half is all evil, unlike King's novel, but that the Dark Half is a product of the imagination that has become reality. These "characters", the gangbangers, the dottering dads, the chicken-fucking rednecks, the swarthy terrorist, have consumed the national consciousness. We both validate these characters and dismiss them at the same time. They exist and yet do not exist.

What is needed is an examination of character, of what it is to live in the world, not what it seems like to a bunch of television writers and academics. In the 1970s, but starting in the 50s, there are many films and novels which sought to discover the meaning of character, whether consciously or not. These stories were an examination of what it was to live in the time, of the paranoia of an age, of a reaction to horrific violence and murder.

The "soldiers" in Iraq are just that: characters, playing soldiers, at least according to our images. They are numbers in a headline, except to their families. When this war is over, and there is a return by these soldiers to civilian life, similar to what occurred post-WW 2 and post-Vietnam, the image of the soldier that America projects right now and what will return will be two entirely different things. Post-WW 2 vets and Vietnam vets had entirely different post-war experiences, but out of both came a paranoia, a dark mindset rooted deep in the psychology of a culture. The films and books of the times studied these realities, broke down the "characters" and exposed some harsh truths about how war affects men and women, even so far for the soldiers as to what it is to be considered a "character" only and dismissed from the national consciousness.

In a sense this is what I'm thinking is happening within America in particular now. I only speculate here in a thread on a website because there's a discussion and it occurs to me. I mean that the population who believes only in the cliches and the characters that are presented to them must become culturally deficient. They are starving to death in their minds, seeking meaning in the trivial. They only see themselves for what the images tell them they are, and it becomes a grand disappointment to discover they are devoid of meaning as the images replace them.

I'm offended that the culture as it exists has chosen to herald the image as fact rather than use the image to examine the realities of our lives. I didn't create it or design it, but I'm disappointed that there's so little substance to American culture there days. Our icons blow, our philosophies are shallow, and our politics remain insipid. But fuck it, the PS3 is out!

Michael you are a silly arse!

Blimey it's catching...

Malcolm wrote: Ask a Vietnam vet about West Point graduates.

It was the same in WWI where the British troops were described as 'Lions led by donkeys'. I think the problem lies not so much with education per se but the class system that smooths the way for the children of those with wealth and position to get the trappings of further education however dense or ill informed they be.