There’s open water and thousands of black birds on the ground, and from the distance, even in my specs, hard to tell, but thinking crows not Canada geese, on the Jersey Turnpike, so far from God, and from the tropical birdhouse in Central Park, and the Key West butterfly house, catch your breath as you enter, here the scrub trees and what must be two feet of snow, two weeks ago on the road to Washington, DC, nothing but roadside sludge, color of strained sewage, tractor-trailer drivers at my height on this Bolt Bus, giant flat-sceen TV windows, why Post columnist Linda Stasi rants against “Jersey Shore,” a knife in the back of her Italian-American heritage, and horrors!, some of the characters playing the reality-TV stars on their way to Italy aren’t even Italian-American, set aside the fact that viewers respond to the show precisely because they recognize the culture’s unwillingness to value education and travel and to experience non-American appetites as full and rich and meaningful, as opposed to being threatened and intimidated by those with different ideas on, say, breakfast food or what side of the road to drive on, or how learning to say merci beaucoup, or a bientot, or s’il vous plait, before flying to Paris for a holiday isn’t unAmerican but rather enriches the American life, perhaps if such behavior were to catch on even to the point that “Jersey Shore” does not reflect the values of our dumbed-down culture and thus wouldn’t play in quite the same way, we wouldn’t be able to feel superior to Snooki and The Sitch in the same way that we do with American Idol, and don’t tell me this show (JS) blazes the fifteen minutes of fame trail, that’s so Andy Warhol, now dumb and numb enough and you’re in ten years of fame easy; I mean “Idol” is 10 years old next year. So rant, yes Linda! http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/boob_arians_invade_Ku6992bF0q7oN7r0zrpRrN . Ranting is good, better than bottling up your disgust, your rage at what accounts for mainstream TV culture in the American Imperium, consider John Milton, his “inward vicious rule,” to wit, in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649), “If men within themselves would be governed by reason and not generally give up their understanding to a double tyranny of custom from without and blind affections within, they would discern better what it is to favor and uphold the tyrant of a nation. But being slaves within doors, no wonder that they strive so much to have the public state conformably governed to the inward vicious rule by which they govern themselves,” and thankfully, we’re just about there .¤.¤. off the Jersey Turnpike, bring it on Philly and Delware (with the “.” – see RFYL: A Congressional Run).
