The Death of Pop Culture

I missed this essay by The Anchoress when she first posted it this past spring, but apparently, it’s still very much in demand:

I suggest that when Mohammed Atta and his pals killed 3000 Americans in New York, and a few hundred more in Washington, D.C., they also struck a blow to the Popular Culture and its providers, which buckled their knees and left them breathless. Regrouping, that culture has spent the last four years staggering about the ring on wobbly pins, insisting that they are alright, that nothing has changed, but the crowd, sensing a loser, is starting to jeer. It may never receive a fatal blow, but its championship days are surely behind it.

People are weary of being lectured to by the media and the culture it promotes. They are tired of being told via sitcoms that their values are silly or via senators that the people they elect are losers. They are tired of reading that the traditions they wish to share within their communities are divisive if they insult an atheist, with no corresponding recognition that an atheist