>>i'm not so sure. i mean, the suspicion towards high
>>culture/metropolitan life/ shapes the us in everything from
>>the difference in funding for the arts to transportation
>>patterns.
>>
>
>transportation patterns? Tell me more. It sounds
>interesting.


suburbanization even around the cities has spread far more than in europe bc the premium placed on preserving the city core wasn't very high and the investments in infrastructure simply weren't made. los angeles is getting a subway *now*. peter hall's cities of tomorrow has a good comparison of europe v america, attitudes over time.



>Yes, it was/is definitely anti-Paris, anti-intellectuals,
>anti-cosmopolitism. And it was a small party, just like the
>FN is a small party nowadays, as opposed to what the recent
>brainwashing convinced people of, but the ideas that it
>defends are far-more widespread than the party itself.

yeah, but are there religious programming channels like the 700 club and clerical counterparts to Jerry Falwell ? like in poland, the church is def important, but you also have explicitly anti-church mags like jerzy urban's which are wildly popular. mocking the religious right in mass culture simply doesn't go over in the us. or consider what kind of nudity is shown on european television.

which is getting a little off-track. bc honestly, the whole notion of the loserishness of being provincial, of facing the metropolis, of valuation of high culture just doesn't exist in the us. i mean, compare the new york review of books and the tls. or bookchat with apostrophe. or just compare book sales. book sales are as high in the uk as in the us, with a fraction of the population. there's simply no question that anti-intellectualism is far stronger in american life.

and since i have it next to me, here's something from the american translator of claire malroux, otherwise known to okp activist as samuel delaney's ex-wife:


May rain drizzles on the beautiful
headlines confirming Francois Mitterand's
election. We have Reagan. ...
Aspiring heads of state are literate
here, have favorite poets, can explain
the way structuralists obliterate
a text. They read at night. They're still all men.
Now poppy-studded meadows of Provence
blazon beyond our red sardine-can car.



and that's the difference between us.