Terror kitsch comes to Manhattan: Street vendors of every obscure nationality are selling American flags; flag pins; red, white, blue (and yellow) ribbons and the ugliest damned T-shirts you can imagine, covered with artwork that would look gaudy next to a velvet couch and inappropriate messages (“I can’t believe I got out!”). It’s kinda comforting to see bad taste returning.
More T-shirt kitsch from Bangkok.
And bitchiness returns: Here are two great lines from the NY Times today. On the entertainment industry trying to learn restraint — “The new piety strikes an odd note: taste is not what some of these people do best.” And here’s Michael Kinsley snipping about Graydon Carter’s pronouncement that irony is dead — “In Vanity Fair, I found it sometimes hard to detect any irony in their respectful treatment of the psychological traumas of movie stars…. If Graydon is promising never to be ironic again, that is a bluff that we may enjoy calling over the coming years.” New York, New York.
