Unpleasant Quasi-Truths

I am reading some old columns of John Derbyshire  (A conservative view of the world today)  in the National Review. One is entitled Unpleasant Truths  http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/222563/unpleasant-truths/john-derbyshire

I read:

Pop culture is filth. It is now completely degenerate. Why do you never hear anyone humming a current pop song any more? Because none of them is hummable, or even worth bothering to remember. What is the main topic on TV sitcoms and “dramedies”? You know what. Why do you stand in the aisle in Blockbuster muttering to yourself: “There isn’t a single damn movie in here I want to watch”? Because Hollywood produces nothing but crap, crap, crap.

Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait. The saddest true thing ever said (by Henri Estienne, 1531-98). Translation: “If youth only knew, if age only could."...

Obviously all pop culture is not filth. I have told the story how I fell in love with Rap in 1984 on Jone's Beach in New York, then came back to Detroit and found 20 Rap tapes for sale locally - it had not yet migrated from the coast.

I consider Grandmaster Flash's New York, NY to be a masterpiece of poetry:

New York New York, big city of dreams

And everything in New York ain't always what it seems

You might get fooled if you come from out of town

But I'm down by law and I know my way around...

I still hum it and sing it, mostly to myself.

Certainly since then, music has changed, but there is always some genius hidden in the celebrity crap of pop culture; not just Rap, all pop culture.

Mr. Derbyshire got into trouble last year with racial remarks. I believe, however, he is a paradigm of a prevalent type of conservative today in that he has sampled little of the diverse life about him, found the small sample wanting, and establishes a "truth" where Plato would have moaned "Opinion, man! That's o-pin-yon!"

I think the saddest commentary about the modern day within Mr. Derbyshire's piece is the fact that he feels it necessary to translate a French quote. We have certainly come a long way down from the good old days.
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