Let's Talk about Yesterday (and Tomorrow)

In reviewing my posts from yesterday, I found a blaring contradiction. First, invoking my Walter once more, I say--

"I contradict myself. So, I contradict myself."

Second, I address this contradiction, because it is paramount to one's understanding of the "high and low" thesis of our tag-line. I began the day by professing my love for the Gotti family, their hair and accents and home. I finished the day with a critical post about Ms. Lindsay Lohan and her "raspy, cocktail waitressing, sanitation-worker-assaulting heritage (and how desperately [she] try[s] to conceal it)." I have no doubt that one or more of the Gottiae have assaulted a sanitation worker (and, for that matter, used the word "colored").

Why am I critical of this B&T business in one place, and not in the t'other? I think it's an issue of "realness." In the magisterial film ATL, the affair of high school, star-crossed lovers, New New and Rashad, mostly consists of the two of them saying to one another, "Just be real with me." Word, New New and Rashad . . . word. The Gottis simply scream "free to be you and me." Lindsay, on the other hand, seems at odds with her past, at every turn playing the preening, pretentious actress who is too dumb to carry off preening and pretention. I seem to remember a phase in which she was crowing about moving to London and having a Fitzgerald-themed birthday party, as if the two were related? And, of course, the Gottis did NOT call Barack Obama "colored" on national television; they know better than to talk about politics--they talk about hair and "Daddy" and vacations.

I just wanted to clear things up, because, here at A&P, we don't just "snark" (a million apologies for using that hateful word) at high and low culture, we LOVE it. I genuinely love Victoria Gotti and Dog the Bounty Hunter and R. Kelly and Britney Spears. I genuinely love Caspar David Friedrich and Anthony Trollope and Art Deco textiles and Antonioni. A&P has little interest in irony. We are earnest folks, trying to build a bridge (no, not to nowhere) between low and middling and high. We address all culture, not just a portion of it, and we celebrate liberation, honesty, and self-awareness.
Speak on it!