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I love leonard's show and I missed this one and went back specifically to hear it. It was not his fault nor the producers'. It could have been really fun if Tucker & Ms E weren't so incredibly cocooned. My god they were boring. Don't blame Leonard --he did the best possible interview and is to be congratulated for not snorting into the microphone at some of their misinformed and spectacularly self-congratulatory lines. Look at it this way, now you know not to buy the book.

This issue of authenticity seems to plague the US much more than it does Europeans - and it's not an issue of class or money. Europeans have very real traditions and various ways of life in each country that they simply hold dear. It's real to them. The inauthenticity begins when someone tries to sell that experience to outsiders.

American culture - or American style capitalism, if you will - seems to want to commodify and exploit anything which can be sold as authentic. But the whole point of authentic is that it cannot be reproduced.

If you're wealthy and can buy yourself a villa in Tuscany - well that's been going on for centuries. The English Romantic poets were doing that 200 years ago and there were others before them too.

I don't begrudge the wealthy this. In any case, you can also move to Tuscany and work as a truck driver if you wanted to. Would that be more or less 'real'?

The point is that you can't just buy into something. If you live there and are able to speak with the locals and abide by their traditions and adopt them for yourself, then it is a true experience that does no harm to the local culture whatsoever. If you do that, it doesn't matter whether you show up in a 5 million dollar villa or in a tent at a campground along the beach.

Rubin- I am convinced that the "quest for authenticity" will be a rising global phenomena.
It's already a formidable marketing tool.. think of how many products read "authentic" or "original"... it seems that "old style" sells more than "never seen before".
It's particularly evident here in the US, perhaps because the US has gone far ahead of others in the western world, the world by the way that I live in and am part of. I think most of us feel displaced by our general environment changing too fast.. so we look for stuff which promises stability.. hence the plastic molding.

Lorenzo - This would be a great show topic. What is driving the emerging obsession with "authenticity" in America, especially once people retire from the workaholic rat race? What does this cultural trend say about American society? That the ruthlessness of our version of capitalism displaces all that cannot immediately be exploited for profit, leaving in its wake endless miles of identical Wal Marts, identical houses, and a monolithic mainstream culture at the very moment America is more polyglot and diverse than ever?

re: comment above by bill koslosky

you hear this nonsense all the time about europeans not being fat from people like tucker and eikenberry.

study after study shows that obesity rates are much higher in poor communities. europeans are less fat than americans because fewer europeans live in severe poverty. (and btw, both obesity and poverty in europe are growing, though theyve got a ways to go to catch up with america).

tucker and eikenberry saying europeans are less fat because they digest better reflects their privlidged status as rich hollywood actors, like everyone else has pointed out.

Rubin... let's push this show topic, I think it's totally actual and nevralgic.
As capitalism un-roots.. one product becomes more and more rare: an authentic experience. Umbrian vacations, like so many other products of the tourism industry, promise to bridge that gap between the potentially meaningless life of the workaholic with experiences supposedly more original and authentic.
I think it's the same reason why we're surrounded by so much fake "traditional" crap..plastic molding details for example.

Rahul
Just look where they're doing their book signings: the Upper West Side and Ridgewood, NJ. These people have a book to sell. They know where their market is.

Lorenzo - I totally agree. The "quest for authenticity" will be the new fixation of America's privileged as they enter their retirement years. This observation would be the basis of a far more original show.

Steve and Momos are right. Exactly what audience did Leonard's producers have in mind with this segment? The vast majority of New Yorkers could care less about the cliched obsession privileged Hollywood elites have with Tuscany. Only a very specific audience (white, upper-middle class, theater-going, 60-somethings living in Park Slope or Upper West Side) would tune in for this garbage. Then WNYC and public radio turn around and claim NPR is for everybody. Maybe so when you feature segments on the favored holiday destinations of New York taxi drivers with enough frequency that they can join "Adventures of Privileged White American Liberals in Tuscany" in the canon of predictable genre stories on public radio.

"thanks Leonard" .. oh my, this interview was so petty, so superficial. More interestingly however... doesn t everybody think that this "quest for authenticity" will be more and more one of the signature activities that the privileged will engage in?

yes i agree - I really like Brian Lehrer's show

What inane blather.

Please have Tucker elaborate on his theory that Europeans are not overweight because they digest their food.

Do we really need to hear YET ANOTHER story about a bourgeois American couple living in an Italian farmhouse?

When will The Leonard Lopate Show escape the white baby boomer choke hold? Come on, WNYC.

EXACTLY!!

If you really worried.. you'd shut up!!

I am from Umbria:

1) Siena is in Tuscany
2) There are scores of foreigners owning restored rural houses in Umbria
3) Spoleto is where the festival of two worlds is:
the counterpart is Charleston, SC
4) 300 years in Umbria is maybe like 1870 in NY
5) Foreigners, however welcomed, are, together with the usual reasons, changing the very world they romantically admire by transforming it into a product rather than a way of life.

I usually love the show, but find listening about the privileged lives of rich Hollywood actors to be quite annoying....

Please alert Leonard thas Siena is in Tuscany, not Umbria.
Assisi (St. Francis's town) and Perugia are in Umbria.
Thanks