Photo: No More “Breakfast All Day”

No more “breakfast all day” is more than a metaphor.

There’s No Way Like The American Way, the sign says at the American City Diner, which closed recently.

The contradiction of faux-authenticity in America is obliterating the pop culture of the past and recasting it into something deeply suspect and unsavory using today’s woeful lowbrow standards of quality.

We’ve been hearing this for years but what’s different now is context. The modern citizen (the Average Joe) knows nearly nothing of basic history, does not read, write or outline particularly well, and shuns the other humanities. 

That’s what’s different: no knowledge of what begat what – and why – and with what repercussions.

How does something’s value change when it’s viewed out of context? How much linear contextualization is needed to prepare a value judgment? Average Joe won’t be able to say much on the topic as his eloquence is attenuated by screen mesmerization and a Twitter/Newspeak vocabulary.

In order to know what *is* good, you have to know what *was* good, and why. Period. Average Joe comes across as unprepared to think for extended periods in the linear, sequential manner on which Western civilization was built. 

The American City Diner had tasty food and will be missed by some but its faux-authentic vibe remains part of American culture, vigorously less-dead than the diner’s plants and tv antennas. Its approach to the past is resulting in the USA being as ordinary as the rest of the world. It didn’t used to/have to be that way. Why be average, Joe?

August 19, 2018

photos & text copyright John W. Carmody