From Whatever Happened to Culture by Joseph Epstein:

As for that ruck, defined as a crowd of ordinary or undistinguished persons, at a time when everyone is lined up politically, and when it is now not permissible to be apolitical, it is difficult to point to men or women of true culture. Jacques Barzun once seemed such a person; so too, did Lionel Trilling, Ralph Ellison, Marguerite Yourcenar, and Willa Cather. One cannot think of people of their stature and general distinction today. Might it be that the current Zeitgeist has snuffed out all possibilities for such distinction, has killed the very idea of high cultural distinction, and with it the ideal of the man or woman of culture?