Art Jazz Lit Obama, by Mark Morford

The First Couple just might make America cool again, for the first time


This has got to stop, Mr. President.

I mean, what the hell? Just what do you think you're doing to our famously low, blithely unsophisticated American cultural standard? What are you trying to do to our values and our tastes and our happy, tacky, mass-produced numbskull Wal-Mart aesthetic? What's next, sipping absinthe with Mark Morris and talking up meditation techniques with the Dalai Lama before inviting Nick Cave and Jack White and M.I.A. over for a jam session? I mean, come on.

I first noticed your -- what shall we call it -- predilection for effortlessly upping the quality and tone of the normally drab, relatively useless White House artistic contribution not too long ago, in a little sidebar about how you and Michelle had taken to hosting an ongoing series of surprisingly hip, stylish entertainments over in the East Room.

It's a space I don't recall reading much about during the Dark Days of Bush, despite that it's apparently the largest room in the White House, the place where presidents host all sorts of gatherings and dinners and concerts under the gaze of giant chandeliers and heavy drapes and yawning, museum-grade Hallmark prettiness. ...

(click here to read the rest)

(Full URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/06/03/notes060309.DTL&nl=fix)



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It becomes representative of a sophisticated vibrant America.