Stubbs, inspired, on Seinfeld versus Rumsfeld

A week or so back we were watching a TV doc on the making of Seinfeld (timed to promote the DVD's release obviously) , all about the early days and how the series very nearly never got off the ground. And the missus and I were indeed reflecting, a la Stubbs, that, viz the Nineties, those were different times indeed. They seem positively halcyonic in retrospect. A bit of centrist underachieving and ultimately thwarted muddle-through would be utopia compared to what's going on now politically. And curiously--undermining that old theory that hard times and turmoil and instability create great music, culture, etc--the Nineties was pretty much nonstop greatness when it comes to music. Whereas the first half of the Noughties, which is now coming to an end, the first five years are up, has been... honestly not that impressive. (Oh there are pockets of amazingness, but there always are). The culture of resistance that you'd think might emerge in such conditions has pretty much failed to materialise, and where it does exist it's on very reduced and cornered-seeming premises. And meanwhile, mainstream-wise, the culture of irony/triviality/kitsch/pomo-pastiche etc etc is ever more ascendant (so much for 9/11 and the new seriousness). Odd.