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The Cultural Elite of St. Louis

13th January, 2011 - Posted by Wolf Paul - No Comments

(Warning: somewhat tongue-in-cheek)

In the first 2011 issue of Touchstone, James Hitchcock, a history professor at St. Louis University, reports on the recent sale by the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod of KFUO-FM, a radio station which long ago gave up broadcasting any religious content but was noted as one of the last few stations devoted to classical music. For reasons I don’t really want to get into it was sold to an evangelical group which turned it into a Joy-FM, a  Contemporary Christian Music station, much to the chagrin of St. Louis’ cultural elite.

What I find remarkable and astonishing, and what makes me almost fear for the future of the United States (i.e. if such is the intelligence level of their cultural elite), are the reactions from disappointed former listeners.

In the debate of the sale which played out in letters to the editors of various local St Louis papers, outraged citizens charged the new owners of the station with being part of a conspiracy “to control the media, education, government, politics and other instruments of power so as to expunge free expression, spirit and thought and to put in their place sectarian scripture, holy spirit and religious faith”. Another former listener expressed his satisfaction that St. Louis Cardinals basebal player Albert Pujols, who is one of the financial backers of the new station, had dropped a fly ball in a recent game, yet another one told Pujols “to keep his personal religion to himself” and encouraged fans to jeer Pujols every time he came to bat. The crowning piece of idiocy among these reactions was the person who informed the readers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that his wife “is threatening to rip out our car radio rather than listen to one second of  the new station.” Read some of these letters here (scroll down towards the end).

It seems the cultural elite in St Louis do not have enough savvy and intelligence to know how to change the channel on their radios or to turn these radios off if they don’t like what’s being broadcast; they seem awfully insecure  if such a change of broadcast format causes them to feel threatened by conspiracies; they seem to feel that providing a classical music station (which LCMS did for 65 years) is among the primary purposes and obligations of a religious denomination.

Please someone tell me that this is just St. Louis, and is not representative of the cultural elite of the United States.

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