NY Times “Discovers” Music Museum
I grew up just down the road from Vermillion, South Dakota, where the University of South Dakota has the National Music Museum. The New York Times has now “discovered” the museum, and, as usual, when the Times “discovers” something years after the cognoscenti do, the paper has to emit a condescending squeak or two. Zachary Woolfe’s report is crowned with a headline calling the museum “an Unlikely Eden in South Dakota.” Why “unlikely”? Because people in flyover land are yahoos who don’t care about cultural artifacts? Because Dakotans must all be Philistines who’ve never heard of Stradivarius? Many of the Dakotans I grew up with cared about music a hell of a lot more seriously than the average New Yorker. But if I don’t appreciate the toffee-nosedness, I’m glad the Times is bringing news about the museum to the paper’s readers.
