Jonah Goldberg for calling Venice “the closest thing Europe has to an Epcot Center exhibit.” There are tourist traps in ancient, beautiful cities, and then there are fake, hokey tourist traps. If Goldberg thinks Serenissima is like something at Epcot Center (which, even seen at a distance, it is not), I move that the Venetians ban him for life on account of bad taste.
And The Appalling Comment Of The Week Goes To…
5 Responses to And The Appalling Comment Of The Week Goes To…
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Good point. That hadn’t occurred to me. Anything ancient and beautiful would rate low in the eyes of this crowd. When I saw the combination Venice/Epcot Center, I didn’t give a lot of thought as to how someone comes to such a view. I just had a visceral, instinctive reaction to flee from it as quickly as possible. For his next act he can compare The Hermitage and Universal Studios theme park.
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cyrus says:
As far as Goldberg is concerned, there is simply no difference between Epcot and Venice, anyway, except that Epcot is better for having modern amenities. Venice is merely a simulacrum of the true form of the tourist trap, found at Disney or in Las Vegas. He’s not a conservative: He’s a sub-literate barbarian.
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It is absolutely deserving of the “appalling” label. But then again, virtually everything disgorged by the man’s word-processing program is appalling.
I should, however, email him personally to thank him for penning his stupid, verbose piece against Dreher back in March. That piece itself persuaded me that no moral, theological, or philosophical judgment emanating from the constellation of the usual suspects could be trusted, and pushed me in a more reactionary direction than I might otherwise have followed. For both of which enlightenments I am grateful.
Why, in Goldberg’s vision of the universe, how could Venice not be an Epcot-Center style tourist trap? Venice has preserved much of its historic character and charm, when we all know that the truly enlightened would have subjected it to the gales of creative destruction, modernizing it, perhaps even to the extent of undertaking a massive project to fill the marshy land, drain the canals, and pave everything! Prosperity! Progress! Anyone who repudiates progress is a cynical purveyor of kitsch!