News of the Culture or News of the Universe?

There is widespread and justified concern over the steady decline of culture in America—and in the West generally. In this article I examine the societal forces I believe to be largely responsible for this disquieting tendency. Among them I identify the loss of psychic and intellectual immunity to Bad Art; the century-long slide into vulgarity, tawdriness, and sleaziness, which have helped turn America into the Land of Entertainment; the loss of standards and criteria of taste and judgment in both the production of art and its critical evaluation; the loss—especially in America—of innocence brought on by the corrosion of human values; and, finally, the rise of sentimentality and the consequent triumph of kitsch, which has come to be accepted as an illusory substitute for genuine seriousness and sentiment. In this context I juxtapose what I call “news of the culture†with “news of the universe.â€