Between white America's appropriation of black American pop culture and the rise of yuppie hipsterdom, this applies just as much to the U.S., doesn't it?
That is what makes shows like Portlandia so popular. It satirizes exaggerated hipsterdom. It is a funny show if you have those people in your circle of acquaintances.
But at the same time it glorifies it.
That is of course interesting. I believe Slavoj Zizek (who's quote is at the top of the article) would have a lot to say about that. How the new mode for something to be accepted is for it to also contain satire about itself. It is in a way inoculating itself against other satire.
I recommend reading or listening to Zizek. Not sure how serious you can take him (maybe his philosophy works are more in depth and serious) but his talks are very engaging. It at least makes for good conversation topics.
Or read some of Thomas Frank's books, which discuss this phenomenon in the American context in detail. There's a chapter in his excellent One Market Under God, (http://www.amazon.com/One-Market-Under-God-Capitalism/dp/038...) for instance, about a team of Nike marketers sent to mine inner cities for cultural authenticity.
When poor or redneck Whites live in their own way, the are characterized as uneducated violent brutes who are in need of education and culture.
And yet when middle class Whites act decently, they are attacked for their soullessness and lack of authenticity. They are criticized for being out of touch with poor people, by the same people who heap scorn on poor (White) people.
See my blog for a deconstruction of anti-racist ideology and its attack on White people.
Your comment seems sensible, but then your blog is full of far-right nuttery. Racism and classism are things. Popular racism against white people is actually largely classism: how dare they be rural working class or urban upper-middle class!
Besides which, black people in the USA are under attack in the form of being regularly murdered by officers of the state for no legal reason.
It's not 1950. The WASPs lost their lock on the establishment around the time my father was born. The Ivy League graduate Liberal intelligentsia have been the establishment for 40 years on the outside.
Jeb's Catholicism is not a big deal for his electability or this would not be the first time I'd heard of it. By this time Mitt Romney's run I'd read multiple discussions on his Mormonism.
America has a love/hate relationship with snobbism and elitism.
I think very roughly, Americans are fine with economic classes, but not with social classes. Probably because even our rich are mostly new money outside of Manhattan elite.
We love us some Warren Buffet, but hate fatcat, bluebooded new york bankers.
It probably explains why reality TV is obsessed with following around Rich people doing mundane things.
