MEXIFORNIA Victor Davis Hanson 148

Our sophisticated and discontented in the universities are

also correct that American tastes spread insidiously, and like bad

money drive out any competing expression that offers real con-

tentment and transcendence. But these more discerning critics still

are profoundly mistaken in suggesting that grasping corporations,

through the evil of advertising and the lust for obscene profits,

foist a depressing mass culture upon the people.

Would that this were the case, and that the popular culture

could therefore be reshaped with a magic wand of regulations

into something a little more tasteful, less shocking to a submissive

populace. But the truth, instead, is that Americans find their mov-

ies, videos, bestsellers, Internet surfing, TV shows and magazine

crassness immensely relaxing and entertaining as well as easily

accessible. In short, it is all a shared addiction that inexorably

builds affinity across racial lines, despite the best efforts of the

sophisticates to tear such commonality apart.

What leftists have completely missed is that the greatest engine for

social and cultural equality and harmony in America is the corpo-

rations they denounceâ€"amoral entities that follow profits rather

than allegiance to ideas, prejudices good and bad, or tradition.

Jack-in-the-Box couldn’t care less that its clerk at the window is of

illegal status or dark hue, or has values that are very different from

most native Californians. Nor does it care whether she talks with

her car-bound customers, or whether she needs government money

to supplement her minimum-wage earnings. If she has hands and

legs that work, then she is like any other human in the world; and

if her English is nonexistent, well, then the corporation can craft a

machine of universal symbols to bypass that slight impediment for

the nine hours she is on its watch.

In my own community, the great fans of Business-Max and

Home Club are Hispanics, not fifth-generation Anglos who have







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