I don’t know, maybe things are more “penetrable” (stable, continuous?) if viewed from a distance. Folks are still reading the Bible, Shakespeare, Twain. Storytellers depend on the same old structures. Rock bands are still writing blues-based songs with intros, bridges, choruses. There are such things as timeless substrates below our admittedly surface-level wildly various pop culture. Albeit, surely, acknowledging such a thing isn’t always how to fill the sails of those with vested interested in creating or discovering and explaining “the new”.

Safe persecution, I term I just made up, means that you are *actually* safe — no one is going to come to your house and drag you away. But you take some kind of pleasure in feeling that The Man (or The Elite or what have you) is out to get you. Whether it’s the War on Christmas, or Big Oil surpressing the information on Global Warming. (Read “What’s the Matter With Kansas” for a good rundown on the peddling of outrage by the political right.) Safe persecution means that you can feel part of a community, because you’re on the inside and we’ve rounded up the wagons to protect ourselves against *them.*

Here’s my theory on why. The Proverbial Sixties overthrew the Authentic. Being *in* the Mainstream was no longer Authentic. Now you had to be *out* of the Mainstream to have a truly “Authentic” experience. (Kerouac writes, “How I wish I were a Negro!” or some such.) To be persecuted, or discriminated against, gets you the badge of Authenticity. Hence the rise of Extreme Sports, marketed to the white middle class, so they too can have an Authentic Experience as they are bungee jumping off a bridge.

What Focus on the Family and Lewis Black are both peddling is Outrage, Safely Packaged for your enjoyment.

Did you read, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy? Neither did I. I couldn’t figure out what all this don’t panic stuff was about for a while. The people who used that phrase were in on something that I wasn’t.