Running for Your Life: Why So Smug?

Maybe it’s just me, but this season every human image I see – in subway advertising, in New York Post lifestyle coverage, in glossy magazines – shows a smug expression.

Now that everyone with a phone is a photographer, then both sides, photog and subject, come to expect the smug caricature of their otherwise more complete selves.

I don’t see anything sinister in this, although perhaps a younger-me would. Rather, when we live in an age where each of us in the media-defining elite can easily aspire to be a leader in the constantly dividing and narrowing court of public opinion, smugness is not only our default expression but one that will only deepen and crystallize as this endlessly self-reflecting culture rolls on.

In this vein, beware the power and seduction of zomboid devotees of Ayn Rand and “Atlas Shrugged” (check out “Ayn Rand Nation” by Gary Weiss http://amzn.to/UQuYYB), the mirror image of New York City-style smugness, who in contrast to the complacent lamestream media have a truly sinister plan to dominate the mush we’ve wrought as social and political culture.

Running for Your Life: Rambling Runs in Key West