Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 19

_ExgecUng^JheJBar|^^

15

Aztec culture was messianic and invasive and
imperialistic; it had been so ever since the Aztecs came
down from the north [and] slaughtered or enslaved the
resident people around what is now Mexico City___
It was an evil fate to be enslaved by 16th century
Spanish regidors. But it was no joke to be one of the
countless thousands whose hearts were ripped out by
the Aztec priests of Teotihuacan in order that the sun
might rise in the morning. The Spanish burned nearly
all the written records of Aztec history, except for a
few codices. But the Aztecs, when they conquered
central Mexico, also destroyed all the records of the
previous societies, so that there could be no history
before thelrs....^^
California State University, Bakersfield
Notes

Steven Carter

1. The phrase is Roger Kimball's. See Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has
Corruoted Higher Education (New York: Harper and Row, 1990).
2. Alan Eddstein, Everybody is Sitting on the Curb: How and Why America's
Heroes Disappeared (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996), pp. 4-5. Of related
interest: Nat Hentoff, Amcr/caw Heroes; In an dO u tof Smool (Nevf York:
Delacort Press, 1987); Harold Lubln, ed.. Heroes ana Anti-Heroes (Scranton:
PA; Chandler Publishing Co., 1968); Joe McGinnis, Heroes (New York: Pocket
Books, 1977); Richard Schickel, Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity
(New York: Doubleday & Company, 1985); and Robin M. Williams, Jr.,
American Society: A Sociological Interpretation, 3rd ed. (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1970).
3. Arianna Hufflngton, "Put Jenny, Sally, and Jerry Out of Work," Los Angeles
Times, December 10,1996, B7.
4. Tom Cassidy, "Guardian Angelfish Saves Family from Fire," Weekly World
News, June 8,1993, p. 5.
5. Douglas). Stewart, "Apollo, the Destroyer," Tfie New Republic, February
18,1967, p. 15.
6. New iMrousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (London: Paul Hamlyn, 1969), p.
186.
7. C. P. Cavafy, The Complete Poems of Cavafy, trans. Rae Dalven (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961), pp. 18-19.
8. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 4.
9. Robert Hughes interprets the message of Cavafy's poem, as 1do, in the light of
contemporary life in America. Hughes, however, puts a political spin on
"Expecting the Barbarians": "The favorite all-purpose Barbarians, at present,
are called 'multiculturallsts.'" (Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 199^), p. 80).