Moral Realism

Re Lionel Trilling:

The spiteful grudges of the New York (mainly Jewish) intellectuals revealed themselves at the Daedalus conference on Mass Culture (1959) when they spurned my common sense proposal that teachers identify excellence in mass culture and urge their students to go and do likewise.

The NYI's would rather debate their own alleged excellences than do the grub work of aiding their students to excel in the new environment. I blame the mess of Rush Limbaugh and other mindless cranks on their failure to see this, their own "trahison des clercs".

Mass Culture is an American mess mainly because our eggheads, conservatives as well as liberals, engaged in a childish status race.