ACF Middlebrow#1

 

James Lileks and I bring you a Thanksgiving surprise, the browsing rant and ranting browsing through middlebrow & midcentury America. We’ve got lots to offer:

  1. Cultural archaeology and commercial archaeology–our fascination with what life was like in America before.
  2. Hitchcock and the movies as inadvertent documentaries.
  3. The great fracturing in the ’50s: Freudianism–youthful alienation–smarmy rebels you want to slap the cool out of–The Heiress (1949)–Monty Clift–Henry James.
  4. The collapse of the culture, as work of the most successful classes, who most should have defended their taste and habits.
  5. Middlebrow is inescapable, but inherently unstable. Technology pulls us in the direction of progress, but a sense of taste makes us want to bring back some formalities, mores, and pleasures that depend on us all doing the same thing…. We cannot tolerate too much imposition on our freedom, but so soon as we make small concessions to comfort or whim, a deluge follows.

If you share the passion for cultural-commercial archaeology, make sure to visit lileks.com!

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  1. MLH Inactive
    MLH
    @MLH

    That was fun!

    I, too, would like to see some formality in dress return (says one who often kneels, crawls and lies on the floor for her work). I think that this is some of the reason for the success of Downton Abbey, A Place to Call Home, The Crown, etc.  Even on OWN’s Greenleaf , the characters all dress!

    • #1
  2. St. Salieri / Eric Cook Member
    St. Salieri / Eric Cook
    @

    This podcast was a hoot!  A tour-de-force of good humor, wit, and insight, and worth your time.  I kept wishing to jump in but why bother when James Lileks is doing such a great job.  Loved it.

    • #2
  3. Jim Beck Inactive
    Jim Beck
    @JimBeck

    Morning Titus,

    What do you mean by middle brow?  If you are referring to the typical GI family and then their boomer children, I have some questions.

    • #3
  4. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Jim Beck (View Comment):
    Morning Titus,

    What do you mean by middle brow? If you are referring to the typical GI family and then their boomer children, I have some questions.

    Hello, Jim!

    Middlebrow is not high brow–like opera or philosophy–but it’s not lowbrow either. It’s a middlebrow thing to do to not insist on what is lowbrow, of course.

    So the things James is talking about, such as men being expected to dress with certain proprieties, over against the propensity to slovenliness of the civilized male animal–that’s middlebrow. It’s not ceremonial dress; but it’s not cargo shorts & a tank top. It’s in-between.

    It is also what would have been the case with the typical GI family.

    Middlebrow is the culture of the middle classes. I’ll get to what culture is another time. Broadly speaking, the middle classes comprise those Americans who have to work for a living, but who can make a living by their work, such that they have some leisure.

    There are two ways of thinking about what’s middlebrow for these middle classes.  One is, a combination of the high & the low. So the director I’ve talked about most on my podcast is Hitchcock. In his case you see how the questions typical of philosophy & tragedy are brought out of lowbrow thriller/horror murder mysteries. This is the popular way. There are thinkers who know how to deal with their particular form of storytelling, but who are not satisfied to charm an audience–instead, they insist on thinking through the popular genres & the popular opinions.

    The problem is that all middlebrow combinations are inherently unstable.

    I’ll talk about the movies, being that that’s what puts money on my table. My friend Eric & I have recorded a discussion of Hitchcock’s Rope & we’re set to record a conversation on Strangers on a train, too. These are stories about class structure in America & the place of Enlightenment &, respectively, aristocracy in America. But Hitchcock did not want to write a treatise or do something of that kind. He wanted to reflect on America in stories & he wanted to reach a broad audience, so he gave people what people loved wanted–murder mysteries. But he didn’t leave it at that; he also made sure his movies could also provide an education to those who want it, one which doesn’t seem less impressive than what one could learn in a department of psychology, sociology, &c.

    Which brings me to my next point–college is middle brow in America–calling it higher education is, to say the least, a misnomer.

    As for the instability–Hitchcock had a good run, but his career ended long before he died, because the institutional way of producing middlebrow culture had had enough of him, let’s say. & so far as his work matters, neither are the most popular things the best, nor are the unpopular things necessarily bad. The people is not often a good judge of what’s worthwhile so far as poetry is concerned. Unfortunately, & James & I talk about this somewhat, too, the arbiters of taste & the educated classes on whom transmission of culture to some extent depends–they screwed up, too.

    That’s another discussion, why are the successful classes of America unreliable transmitters of what’s worthwhile, even when it enjoyed the much-sought American seal of middlebrow approval, a combination of popularity & prestige.

    Of course, all this said–I’m looking forward to hearing what’s on your mind about the typical GI family, about which I expect you know more than me!

    • #4
  5. St. Salieri / Eric Cook Member
    St. Salieri / Eric Cook
    @

    One thing I think that needs to be said is that middle brow culture certainly predates the Post-WWII era.  One of the things that James hints at is it’s pervasive and commercial aspects.  When he compares the ads of the 1890s to the 1950s.

    The American middle class of the 1950s was sort of the apex (at least in some ways) of two centuries of American social aspirations, but it was unstable and didn’t last very long.  Its hopes were either abandoned, destroyed in grotesque parodies of itself, or attacked and destroyed (so it both had internal and external problems).  Its roots (both good and bad) are in Victorian respectability, see Titus’ work on Psycho.  I would argue that in the Victorian era in America and in Great Britain the new found wealth of the commercial classes and those that supported them in cities and towns (and more so in America the countryside), suddenly found themselves with a new position of leisure.  They had choices to make about how to use their wealth and leisure to define themselves.  They wanted to show they had intellectual and moral worth, but didn’t want to be seen as decadent or immoral like the upper-classes were often perceived in the early 19th century and in America, they didn’t want to be seen as being elitist in a way that was non-democratic, especially as later in the 19th century the American upper classes aped the landed gentry and great aristocrats of England often marrying them, see also Churchill, Winston.  At the same time, they didn’t want to be associated with the rough and tumble, vice and degradation whether social, material, or moral of the working classes, especially the working poor.  So a regimen of respectable grew up that included dressing up, educational and artistic pretensions.  But only art and music and literature that was seen as moral as well as of quality, though the moral and sentimental often beat out any artistic or intellectual merit.  Church going, moral behavior, and an ethos of doing what is right were embedded in this world as a safeguard against licentiousness or decadence from below and above.  Education is part of this, you should be well-rounded in your education but morally sound, and not too highfalutin in your intellectual flights of fancy.  Finally, these people still had to work for a living, and so the specter of idleness (with it’s moral and religious connotations) and financial failure, meant a high emphasis on frugality and commercial productivity.  In American literature (c. 1850-1910) you can see this explored in  Washington Square by Henry James that James Lileks tied so neatly into the discussion through the film from stage adaptation, The Heiress.  Also novels like, The Damnation of Theron WareThe House of the Seven Gables (which traces it back to Puritan culture and religion), The Rise of Silas LaphamThe Gilded AgeSister Carrie, and even Life with Father.

    • #5
  6. St. Salieri / Eric Cook Member
    St. Salieri / Eric Cook
    @

    The thing that changes about respectable culture is that in the 1910s-1920s with the unprecedented growth of American wealth that was seen from the 1880s-1920s the people who can enter this middle class greatly increases, and its aspirations are now commercialized by the advertising industry and it is both celebrated and sometimes critiqued by those in the arts, but the people who are in the arts still see themselves as the heirs of western Civilization and want to transmit that culture and in some ways protect the best parts of it by being corrupted by the bad parts of this Cult of Respectablity.  You see this in novels like Babbit, This Side of Paradise, and others in the 1920s.  Also, people like H. L. Mencken and other social critics, even in some conservative critics of the time (Nock and T. S. Eliot come to mind).  The Depression and the War put the ability of many to reach that cultural place on hold since they had to survive, but the postwar boom opens the door for so many and they embraced the trappings of it so quickly and it all fell apart so quickly.  In part, because so many of the elites or elite-wanna-be’s despised it, and attacked its backbone – the great art and literature of the West and Christianity and traditional Judaism.  One example I wish I could have added to the discussion of Leonard Bernstein was Candide and his Mass.  He goes from being a transmitter of the West to an attacker over the course of his career.  But I’ve said enough, I hope this helps Jim Beck and doesn’t muddy the waters, Titus Techera and James Lileks.

    • #6
  7. MLH Inactive
    MLH
    @MLH

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    Which brings me to my next point–college is middle brow in America–calling it higher education is, to say the least, a misnomer.

    This was not always the case, though, no? At least not a liberal arts education (STEM being the trades in their way).  When did this change? The simple answer would be “with the GI Bill” but I’m thinking much earlier.

    • #7
  8. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    MLH (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    Which brings me to my next point–college is middle brow in America–calling it higher education is, to say the least, a misnomer.

    This was not always the case, though, no? At least not a liberal arts education (STEM being the trades in their way). When did this change? The simple answer would be “with the GI Bill” but I’m thinking much earlier.

    The GI bill really did start the democratization of higher education, such as it existed before. Not that the bill was a bad idea, but it was carried out as democratization & without the super-human efforts required to make good on the promise rather than make a compromise that would have strange consequences in America…

    There have always been very few places where higher education was higher; or stayed that way even for a generation or two. It’s just that the mediocrity of mediocre education was considerably superior to what it is now. Americans were expected to know at least some things about American history; they knew their Bible fairly well, though they didn’t think about it much. & there were various habits & beliefs that are now lacking.  The highest highs were not in the 19th c.–but the highest mediocrity was, maybe at the turn of the century…

    The end came when the German-inspired research university became the model. This has allowed for higher education in a sense which didn’t exist before–theoretical science–but ruined what a university should be & what some were in America.

    • #8
  9. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    By the way, Henry James was the most astute observer of the American upper-classes of the late 19th c. that I know, & he already saw a lot of things that were going to become problems much later.

    Washington square is about what’s right & what’s wrong with being a doctor in the upper classes. Business, enlightenment, & respectability are tied up in the person of the doctor & his lack of self-understanding is very important. Harvey Mansfield has a fine essay on it.

    • #9
  10. MLH Inactive
    MLH
    @MLH

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    The end came when the German-inspired research university became the model. This has allowed for higher education in a sense which didn’t exist before–theoretical science–but ruined what a university should be & what some were in America.

    Do you mean the Frankfort School? (Delingpole’s latest podcast touches on this and is. . . depressing.)

    • #10
  11. MLH Inactive
    MLH
    @MLH

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    By the way, Henry James was the most astute observer of the American upper-classes of the late 19th c. that I know, & he already saw a lot of things that were going to become problems much later.

    Washington square is about what’s right & what’s wrong with being a doctor in the upper classes. Business, enlightenment, & respectability are tied up in the person of the doctor & his lack of self-understanding is very important. Harvey Mansfield has a fine essay on it.

    When did doctors even become respectable?

    • #11
  12. St. Salieri / Eric Cook Member
    St. Salieri / Eric Cook
    @

    Titus Techera (View Comment):

    MLH (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    Which brings me to my next point–college is middle brow in America–calling it higher education is, to say the least, a misnomer.

    This was not always the case, though, no? At least not a liberal arts education (STEM being the trades in their way). When did this change? The simple answer would be “with the GI Bill” but I’m thinking much earlier.

    There have always been very few places where higher education was higher; or stayed that way even for a generation or two. It’s just that the mediocrity of mediocre education was considerably superior to what it is now. Americans were expected to know at least some things about American history; they knew their Bible fairly well, though they didn’t think about it much. & there were various habits & beliefs that are now lacking. The highest highs were not in the 19th c.–but the highest mediocrity was, maybe at the turn of the century…

    The end came when the German-inspired research university became the model. This has allowed for higher education in a sense which didn’t exist before–theoretical science–but ruined what a university should be & what some were in America.

    I think this is spot on in many ways, elite American education was far more skeptical and liberal in a classical since before the Civil War or just overtly religious, the high for American middle-brow in an artistic, intellectual sense was probably 1890 until the eve of WWI, but its social high was the 1950s and early 1960s, but the rot was set in by then.

    • #12
  13. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    MLH (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    The end came when the German-inspired research university became the model. This has allowed for higher education in a sense which didn’t exist before–theoretical science–but ruined what a university should be & what some were in America.

    Do you mean the Frankfort School? (Delingpole’s latest podcast touches on this and is. . . depressing.)

    I mean, math, physics, &c. Theoretical science.

    The Frankfurt school is a post-war influence in America & mostly manifested since the mid-Sixties. It mostly supplied liberals with tools for stuff they were already interested in doing. The dangerous stuff is not cultural Marxism. That’s just a kind of popular pastime in the universities & some of the colleges.

    The catastrophes that have brought down education are way more to do with things from which our side is not innocent.

    Just like the unwillingness now to invest in prominent higher education institutions in America is telling. There’s Hillsdale & that’s about it. Conservatives could start dozens; but they do not wish to. They wish to be part of the stuff liberals dominate…

    • #13
  14. St. Salieri / Eric Cook Member
    St. Salieri / Eric Cook
    @

    MLH (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    By the way, Henry James was the most astute observer of the American upper-classes of the late 19th c. that I know, & he already saw a lot of things that were going to become problems much later.

    Washington square is about what’s right & what’s wrong with being a doctor in the upper classes. Business, enlightenment, & respectability are tied up in the person of the doctor & his lack of self-understanding is very important. Harvey Mansfield has a fine essay on it.

    When did doctors even become respectable?

    If I may, doctors were always on the edge of respectability, they often came from the gentry, but it was the lowest of the acceptable professions and with “trade” overtones, see Thackery’s Penndennis in the US they become socially respectable in the 1790s and stay there, but become tied up with commercial wealth in the 1840s and 50s when James sets his novel.  We are talking about college educated physicians, in the US I personally think it has to do with the ties to the Scottish Enlightenment, not just hacks or horse-doctors.  In England it will come a bit later, say by the 1860s during the “Spirit of the 60’s” the second major 19th-century wave of social reform and uplift.

    • #14
  15. St. Salieri / Eric Cook Member
    St. Salieri / Eric Cook
    @

    MLH (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    The end came when the German-inspired research university became the model. This has allowed for higher education in a sense which didn’t exist before–theoretical science–but ruined what a university should be & what some were in America.

    Do you mean the Frankfort School? (Delingpole’s latest podcast touches on this and is. . . depressing.)

    The model is Berlin in the 1870s, the first major place it is felt is John Hopkins which is formed to imitate a German research University.  In the 1870s and 1880s American’s stopped looking to the UK and France for education and to Germany for the model of education, see also Kindergarten.

    • #15
  16. Jim Beck Inactive
    Jim Beck
    @JimBeck

    Morning Again Titus,

    You and James make a great pair.  You know my questions “how did we get here,”” could we think about getting back?” Starting with James’s comment that cultural destruction is easy and a source of pleasure and your observation that the successful class is not good at transmitting what is worthwhile, could we think about how our culture has lost many of the common understandings which allowed earlier generations to live more satisfying lives.  Charles Murray in “Coming Apart” says that the upper class does not preach what it practices and that abdications of moral leadership hurt the lower class. His observation supports yours.  On the other hand, the moral boundaries from the Victorians to the Boomers are bourgeois morals and these morals constrain the elites from George Elliot to Ingrid Bergman, the King of England and American presidential hopefuls.  So I think the cultural constraints of the middlebrow are maybe enhanced because the middlebrow in America and England are proud of their average Joe/Charlie status, and their values are controlling the elites.

    In and article by VDH about “the Old Breed” https://www.hoover.org/research/thanksgiving-toast-old-breed, VDH says the Boomers rejected the stubborn certainty of our fathers and proudly “questioned authority”.  We asserted that our parents had no moral authority and that we knew what was really worthwhile “one generation got soul, one generation got old”.  So we as James said burned their values down; it was part of defining our identity.  VDH said our cohort placed an emphasis on “finding oneself” and discovering our “inner self”.  VDH said that this self indulgent view of self was in part because we, unlike our parents, had experienced no existential threats.  I agree that our bubble of affluence became our base line, and that we hought we were “golden” we were the children of truth.  I also think that the Boomers were the first to be raised where they modeled themselves after each other via the teen culture and not by modeling themselves after adults in their life. So the affluence that gave us the chance to live a life that our parents thought would be a blessing to us was really a curse, in that we lost the threads of even the basic ends and means.  For my father WWII, US Navy, or Mary’s (my wife’s) father English Navy knew in their core that being a good provider was an end that men would work for.  This end was so common that it was common that one of the first questions men would ask each other was “what do you do for a living?”  So the Boomers rejected their parents values and behaviors and lost direction as they in the end had to invent their own moral framework which has become and impossible mess.  It was much easier to mock the morals of old foggies than to build morals for an improved world.

    Given that the current panics suggest that we can’t strip out the need for the sacred from man, and that man still needs a transcendental reason to live, and that gender has the problems it has always had, how might we get back to “the old breed”?

    • #16
  17. blank generation member Inactive
    blank generation member
    @blankgenerationmember

    Fun podcast.

    This made me think of the movie Annie Hall.  There’s that scene where Woody Allen’s character is performing at an Adlai Stevenson fundraiser and cracks a joke at Eisenhower’s expense.  Later in the movie (and time) he’s horrified by a rock concert and later can’t help but mock the decadent L.A. lifestyle.

    That point on 50’s intellectualism leading to consequences.

    • #17
  18. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    blank generation member (View Comment):
    Fun podcast.

    This made me think of the movie Annie Hall. There’s that scene where Woody Allen’s character is performing at an Adlai Stevenson fundraiser and cracks a joke at Eisenhower’s expense. Later in the movie (and time) he’s horrified by a rock concert and later can’t help but mock the decadent L.A. lifestyle.

    That point on 50’s intellectualism leading to consequences.

    Yup. They could have gone another way, but wouldn’t. They weren’t any more interested in dealing with the education of the young than the rest–by the time the Boomers came of age, lotsa people couldn’t recognize’em!

    • #18
  19. blank generation member Inactive
    blank generation member
    @blankgenerationmember

    I’m going to get out of my depth very quickly, but here goes.  In The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams is a very high brow type.  He came to cynical conclusions about things and, after a quick Wiki reminder, he was concerned that a classical education just didn’t prepare him for the pace of technology.  Is there really a place for a high brow education after about say 1914?

    • #19
  20. Jim Beck Inactive
    Jim Beck
    @JimBeck

    Morning Titus,

    You might like this Haidt and Keller; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFD5odFv36k&t=2585s

    Keller is the Steve Jobs of  Evangelicals.  You might note what he says about his WWII CO dad. Also, many of our WWII rich didn’t wear the clothes of the rich. From the “Millioniare Next Door”, we find out that the most common car owned by millioniares, is a Ford.  The WWII generation might all like to wear the same types of hats, but they did not want to particularly stand out, their kids, well that’s different, we wanted to wear our uniform differentness,  differently.

    • #20
  21. tigerlily Member
    tigerlily
    @tigerlily

    That was great fun – Thanks guys! And, I hope you abide by your promise to do this again.

    • #21
  22. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    blank generation member (View Comment):
    I’m going to get out of my depth very quickly, but here goes. In The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams is a very high brow type. He came to cynical conclusions about things and, after a quick Wiki reminder, he was concerned that a classical education just didn’t prepare him for the pace of technology. Is there really a place for a high brow education after about say 1914?

    I like that book, precisely because it shows that the emergence of a German education–in his case, in Berlin–among Americans tends to lead to a catastrophic collapse of confidence. This guy was admittedly also burden by the Adams family expectations & the knowledge of previous Adamses who went down to hell by way of alcohol or suicide.

    But I don’t think what the book reveals is primarily about his own life. I think it dovetails too well with the course of American higher education. I’ll give just one example: Almost all the professional associations–geographers, psychologists, political science, history, you name it–among academics are creatures of the turn of the century. To call them third-rate warmed-up Hegelians would be to lavish praise on them.

    If you want an usual American kicker to go with this–sons of clergymen, not all believers, by any stretch of the imagination, were way over-represented in this enterprise. In that sense, Woodrow Wilson, academic, political scientist, radical education reformer, & son of clergyman was just the proudest, most astounding exemplar of a class of people…

    As for liberal education: Americans of the right social class didn’t take it seriously. When their kids had to turn to it for their self-understanding, they realized they couldn’t believe in it, because neither had their parents.

    America has always been in trouble in regard to knowledge. Everyone’s told about technological-commercial progress being good, & being dependent on scientific progress.

    But everyone also used to be told to expect no progress in politics–least of all in the fundamental constitutional principles. That sets up trouble.

    The liberal arts are all about personal progress, but it takes a community–as in a college–to achieve it. That might give people a way to reconcile the lack of progress in politics with the expectation of progress in commerce & technology. But it’s not available for most–certainly not for most who need it because of the futuristic-revolutionary temptations they face.

    • #22
  23. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Jim Beck (View Comment):
    Morning Titus,

    You might like this Haidt and Keller

    Keller is the Steve Jobs of Evangelicals. You might note what he says about his WWII CO dad. Also, many of our WWII rich didn’t wear the clothes of the rich. From the “Millionaire Next Door”, we find out that the most common car owned by millionaires, is a Ford. The WWII generation might all like to wear the same types of hats, but they did not want to particularly stand out, their kids, well that’s different, we wanted to wear our uniform differentness, differently.

    Really interesting conversation! These guys seem sensible to me. Thanks for sharing it, Jim!

    By the way, what the pastor says about justifying suffering seems wrong to me. Christians are going to hit up against the question of evil way more than they ever have, because modern democracy is theoretical, rationalistic. (The pastor gets at this when talking about how human rights limit majority rule. & when he quotes Nietzsche to say that equality comes from God, yup, it does! Our atheists are not real atheists. Real atheists are natural inegalitarians.)–Unlike ancient democracies, which were perfectly willing to wage war, enslave, & hold empire, because they weren’t theoretical.

    How God could create suffering is ultimately a question about whether it’s worth being human. The way we’ve gone since ancient democracy is back to ancient barbarism. We know at some level–or we think we do–that it’s not good to be human. Better to be a cat, as per cat videos, because all these cute animals do not suffer for fear of death, nor are they tempted by suicide; better to be a computer–the atoms in the computer cloud or cold metal–because there’s no suffering.

    I’m not sure what good answer can be given to cocksure strangers who think they know logic, but secretly hate themselves. Maybe we have to say with Walker Percy & Christian thinkers before him, like Kierkegaard: Think about committing suicide. You have it in your power to do it. Think seriously. If you don’t do it, then your life is a choice. That is human dignity over against the inescapable knowledge of death & suffering.

    • #23
  24. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    St. Salieri / Eric Cook (View Comment):

    MLH (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    The end came when the German-inspired research university became the model. This has allowed for higher education in a sense which didn’t exist before–theoretical science–but ruined what a university should be & what some were in America.

    Do you mean the Frankfort School? (Delingpole’s latest podcast touches on this and is. . . depressing.)

    The model is Berlin in the 1870s, the first major place it is felt is John Hopkins which is formed to imitate a German research University. In the 1870s and 1880s American’s stopped looking to the UK and France for education and to Germany for the model of education, see also Kindergarten.

    I’ll add, it’s not hard to see why Americans turned to Berlin. France & Britain sucked. These educational system were way too involved in a class system they could neither justify nor reform, much less make interesting to foreigners, especially those who, like Americans, have a natural hatred of authority & natural love of the power knowledge offers…

    • #24
  25. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    tigerlily (View Comment):
    That was great fun – Thanks guys! And, I hope you abide by your promise to do this again.

    We’re committed to it, within reason: We have families & jobs, so we cannot promise to synchronize flawlessly… There’s a holiday season coming up now, too!

    Meanwhile, all I can say is, we could really use help with sharing the podcast to reach a wider audience. Ultimately, that’s how I have to justify doing this podcast–reaching people who might want to get more out of American popular culture & find new ways of passing it on, which is why we do so many older movies instead of talking about the latest hit…

    Reviews & ratings on iTunes, shares & likes on social media–this is what it takes to be visible in this virtual world. So please help if you like this sort of thing.

    • #25
  26. MLH Inactive
    MLH
    @MLH

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    Reviews & ratings on iTunes, shares & likes on social media–this is what it takes to be visible in this virtual world. So please help if you like this sort of thing.

    I didn’t find it on iTunes. At least not as “American Cinema Foundation.” Is it listed as “ACF”?

    • #26
  27. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    M, sorry to say, I am not an expert on iTunes, being of the persuasion that shies away from Apple products, but here’s the podcast.

    Please let me know if you learn anything about it.

    I’m always looking to learn how to make it more amenable to the audience–after all, I’m only a beginner…

    • #27
  28. Jim Beck Inactive
    Jim Beck
    @JimBeck

    Afternoon Titus,

    I am pleased you liked the presentation.  The evil question, “I can’t believe in a God who would allow the Holocaust or WWI, or x” has been present for the 20th century.  I think the problem is that newer religions, cults, or even non- belief can not make any sense of evil either and existentialism offers Camus, “you can end it”, so for me the evil thorn is not as great as the tribal identity thorn they spoke of.

    • #28
  29. Rightfromthestart Coolidge
    Rightfromthestart
    @Rightfromthestart

    MLH (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    The end came when the German-inspired research university became the model. This has allowed for higher education in a sense which didn’t exist before–theoretical science–but ruined what a university should be & what some were in America.

    Do you mean the Frankfort School? (Delingpole’s latest podcast touches on this and is. . . depressing.)

    Does anyone have a link to the Delingpole podcast ? I can’t find it by searching.

    • #29
  30. MLH Inactive
    MLH
    @MLH

    Rightfromthestart (View Comment):

    MLH (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    The end came when the German-inspired research university became the model. This has allowed for higher education in a sense which didn’t exist before–theoretical science–but ruined what a university should be & what some were in America.

    Do you mean the Frankfort School? (Delingpole’s latest podcast touches on this and is. . . depressing.)

    Does anyone have a link to the Delingpole podcast ? I can’t find it by searching.

    in iTunes it is “Delingpole with James Delingpole” or you can find it here

    • #30
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