Intellectual Defenestration

Be Your Own Man

Yesterday I was in an airport (I think Phoenix, but they run together) and saw in some culture magazine something along the lines of "Adrien Brody: Raps to His Own Beat." What struck me was that it seems as if nearly every such profile of similarly famous personages says roughly the same thing. "See So-and-So: He/She/It Marches to His/Her/Its Own Drummer/Does Their Own Thing/Blazes Their Own Trail/Finds Their Own Path/Whatever."

All of which smells a little conformist, if you ask me. As Frederica Matthews-Green noted in Church in Emerging Culture, the remarkable thing about the American establishment is how much it loves a rebel.