George Kennan on American "Culture"

From an interview with George Kennan in 1999:

R.U.: It isn’t only our military power that makes us number one. For better or worse, our cultural impact is equally profound. The world flocks to American popular culture.

G.K.: This, alas, appears to be true. We export to anyone who can buy it or steal it the cheapest, silliest, and most disreputable manifestations of our “culture.” No wonder that these effusions become the laughingstock of intelligent and sensitive people the world over. But so long as we find it proper to let millions of our living rooms be filled with this trash every evening, and this largely to the edification of the schoolchildren, I can see that we would cut a poor figure trying to deny it to others beyond our borders. Nor would we be successful. In a computer age, it is available, anyway, for whoever wants to push the button and receive it. And so we must expect, I suppose, to appear to many abroad, despite our military superiority, as the world’s intellectual and spiritual dunce, until we can change the image of ourselves we purvey to others.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1999/aug/12/the-us-and-the-world-an-interview-with-george-kenn/