What Have We Come to in This Country of Consumption?

Maybe it was just fortuitous that I witnessed the Coen brothers’ latest masterpiece prior to reading your Nov. 18 magazine on home and holiday entertaining. Their movie “No Country for Old Men” advances the treatise that men and women of reason can only witness the downward societal spiral that humanity seems to be following, despite their best efforts.

Dan Neil’s column (“The Devil’s Playthings,” 800 Words) bore witness to one such indicator of this spiral--the toys we use to educate our children. The CSI: Forensic Lab made me cringe.

But his piece was even more telling in that it stood in stark contrast to the rest of the issue. “The Hollywood Money Palaces” (by Tina Daunt), “Dress Codes” for the vapid, how to fake a dinner party, “The Entertainers.” I imagined myself as an immigrant using this collection of reporting to understand my new home. How depressing it was in its shallow celebration of the shameless wealth that makes up much of Southern California.

Is this magazine meant to change the world? No. But its approach to showcasing the trivial merely supports the spiral. I’ll run into more of this--on our roads, where people read magazines and put on makeup at 85 mph, clogging our vital arteries. In our stores, where people talk on cellphones 3 feet from their faceless, nameless clerk, carrying out a transaction that used to be a moment of genuine human contact. And in the business world, where marketing and sales executives make decisions about the types of toys our children will be pleading for, despite their long-term impact on the development of those children.

In a world that shows our children that celebrity means taking the path of Britney or Paris, that religion equals child abuse, that business equals every man or woman for themselves a la Enron or any number of examples of corporate greed, it is obvious that this truly is No Country for Old Men.

Kevin Steele

Via the Internet

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You have reached the heights of glorifying trivial and conspicuous consumption, from global warming-inducing palatial celebrity homes to outrageously overpriced clothing. What happened to journalism and the critical issues confronting our community?

Larry Kaplan

Los Angeles