{"id":213,"date":"2008-03-06T07:10:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-06T07:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/new-blog\/?p=213"},"modified":"2014-03-11T15:11:21","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T20:11:21","slug":"hubbards-academy-of-immortals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/hubbards-academy-of-immortals.html","title":{"rendered":"Hubbard’s Academy of Immortals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In the old days, when a nation’s art and culture were monitored and controlled by the government in power, many added their greatest artistic minds to a roster called the Academy of Immortals.<\/p>\n

American popular culture in the 19th century, a young nation with a rebellious streak, prided itself on being a country of the common man: our government was chosen by the unwashed masses (artfully referred to as the “host of Philistia” by critics), our popular music — including our freaking national anthem<\/span> — were based on barroom tunes, and our art was crude, functional, and primitive. What place does an Academy of Immortals have in our fair, young nation?<\/p>\n

By the late 19th century, it was as a cultural jab at Europe. The membership of our country’s Immortals was commonly seen as open to anybody with half a mind to participate: a country of the people, an art-world of the people. Elbert Hubbard<\/a>, one of my favorite people these days, called his magazine the Philistine<\/a> in honor of the free-thinking common man who has no time for culture handed down by ivory towers. His subscribers could, for a $10 lifetime membership, receive whatever back-issues he had on hand, and up to 99 years of free stuff — and each one was granted membership in his American Academy of Immortals<\/a>. Not content to limit membership to existing fans, Hubbard sent out the sheet (seen on the right<\/a>), to encourage his fans to turn in their buddies. What member of the proletariat did not deserve to be part of an American Academy of Immortals?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the old days, when a nation’s art and culture were monitored and controlled by the government in power, many added their greatest artistic minds to a roster called the Academy of Immortals. American popular culture in the 19th century, a young nation with a rebellious streak, prided itself on being a country of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[442,443,444],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1390,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions\/1390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}