" There's no accounting for taste" the Frenchman said to the American. Or is there? We Americans have long been derided for our exceptionally poor taste. What we call culture is met overseas with a collective shake of the head. There, refinement reigns in place of the coarse, the paper to our plastic. How did this disparity arise? After all, aren't we mostly Europeans too, just ones who've happened to live abroad for the last 200 years? How can we account for our beloved Lindsey Lohan or the delightful iPhone app that farts on command?

Mme. Juliette Binoche - Oscar winning actress, accomplished dancer and now Playboy cover girl. The November 2007 issue of French Playboy featured the then 43 year old comedienne " sans interdit". Meanwhile, the issue hitting newsstands Stateside featured another actress of sorts, dancer and Playboy cover girl - Kim Kardashian. They have Carla Bruni, we have Sarah Palin. They have Avedon-esque black and white photos of the first lady and former model, "sans interdit" as well from the early '90's, we have Nailin' Palin. To be fair, Europe is not all bidets and fine wines, they have Dancing with the Stars too (although it's conspicuously absent in France), but by most measurements, we seem to have come out at the bottom of the culture heap.

In America, the market has spoken loud and clear - we will pay good money for trash. A sort of grey goo of tastelessness has been unleashed as purveyors of media manically compete for a share of this insatiable demand. Boobs got bigger, blondes got blonder. What we're seeing is the democratization of Culture, and although it's most certainly bell-shaped, with things like PBS and museums on either end, the bulge in the middle is what I'm concerned with.

There were four main waves of European immigration into the early United States, the largest and last of which took place throughout the 18th century up until the Revolutionary War. These early settlers were poor families fleeing the newly founded United Kingdom with its political unrest, ecclesiastical dogmas and resultant uprisings and rebellions. It's been argued that character traits of these four groups can be traced to those of present day regional Americans, even these many generations later. Could it be that we inherited our philistine nature from these early settlers? The problem with the poor is education. One who's never seen a Vermeer or heard a Bach cello suite has a fundamentally handicapped set of aesthetic values. These early settlers arrived in a culturally barren land, leaving behind a mecca but brought none of it with them. American culture was grown in a virtual vacuum, one where the newly transplanted peasantry were left to map the trajectory.

Europe has its own historical shadow, namely centuries of governments alternating between monarchies and dictatorships. This legacy of monolithic power, combined with the generally socialist slant extant in a post-fascist Europe helps to explain its undemocratic treatment of taste and culture. French Playboy will continue to put sophisticated women on its cover, even if the masses in the countryside demand more plebeian fare (which we remain awash in, thanks Tiger). Although it seems, in time, they just might get their wish. With McDonald's and Jeff Koons coming to the Louvre, and the EU's ramped up role in the global economy, Europe is trading in its cultural integrity for economic power. Beware the grey goo!

But it's not the end of the world. There are some who argue that globalization is in fact a good thing, as it enables free cultural trade between countries according to their respective demands. France is getting a McDonald's in the Louvre because as it turns out, they quite like McDonald's. And maybe they actually like Jeff Koons too, after all, there's still no accounting for taste.