Civilization As We Know It Is Fast Coming To An End

Civilization as we know it is fast coming to an end. The signs are all around us and have been for several decades now. On the theory of If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em, calls are being made for classical music's surrender to pop culture by means of shaping concert programming to be more in line with the sensibilities and tastes of groundlings; university Humanities departments now consider Spider-Man comic books and Stephen King novels to be fit subjects for study; and it's now taken as a given that a college education should be available to all no matter how intellectually deficient one might be. And now we read this by Philadelphia Inquirer restaurant critic Craig LaBan; something we never in our lifetime expected to read:

The cheese trolley is broken at [Philadelphia's] Le Bec-Fin. And that's not all. No, the fact that its crystal lid had long since been replaced by plexiglass [sic] that split across the rear like a cheap suit was only a fraction of what was bothering me here.

The clueless server, scowling with faux gravitas, had rolled it up to our table backward, misidentified half its contents, and allowed the rind of one sloppy wedge to smear back and forth against the lid.

[...]

Changing tastes, a fumbling economy, rising competition, and an even more inflated ego ([Executive chef, founder and owner Georges] Perrier's) have all played a role in the demise of what was the premier showpiece of Philadelphia [and a premier showpiece of U.S.] dining for an incredible four decades.

O tempora! O mores!

RTW Sad T here.