God Bless Chuck Klosterman.

He has the culture war nailed in the latest(January 2005) Esquire(www.esquire.com) , to wit:

"Culture can't be wrong. That doesn't mean it's always 'right', nor does it mean you always have to agree with it...Culture is just there...So don't get pissed off over the fact that the way you feel about culture isn't some kind of universal consensus...You're not wrong, but neither is the rest of the world. And you need to accept that those two things aren't really connected."

Exactly. As another article in another Esquire pointed out, people who say they hate American culture really hate America. America is big, messy, ugly, vain, self important, and gloriously free and perfect and beautiful too.


And another thing...

From the same issue is a long article about an Iraqi woman who was well publicized as a victim of Saddam and turned out to have invented most of her story. Why doesn't right wing radio and TV trumpet an example of a journalist getting a story right? Oh, because it might be seen as questioning the war. And we can't be seen questioning the overall narrative. Saddam was a world class dirtball, but lying about it doesn't help matters any.