In both these roles it ratifies more than it creates.Wall Street will advance the millions to make a Hollywood movie only if convinced that a bestselling title or a star name will ensure its success.New York is a judging town, and often invokes standards that the rest of the country deplores or ignores.A market for knowingness exists in New York that doesn’t exist for knowledge.The ad agencies are all here too, testing the markets and devising the catchy jingles that will move millions from McDonald’s to Burger king,so that the ad agency’s “creative director” can lunch instead in Manhattan’s expense-account French restaurants.The bankers and the admen. The marketing specialists and a thousand well-paid ancillary service people, really set the city’s brittle tone― catering to a wide American public whose numbers must be respected but whose tastes do not have to shared.The condescending view from the fiftieth floor of the city’s crowds below cuts these people off from humanity.So does an attitude which sees the public only in terms of large, malleable numbers― as impersonally as does the clattering subway turnstile beneath the office towers.
