Regional individuality has vanished, replaced by a homogenized, spaceless, timeless world where, in the words of the Mazda Miata commercial, "Blue jeans and white T-shirts were in."

But this world, for all its democratic aspirations, does not admit all comers. And it does not allow for pluralism. Threatened by the drama, excitement and danger of real urban culture, our suburbs have countered it with Gapified culture, a non-threatening, undramatic boring collection of handsome clothing and bland, decent food.

Step one is to co-opt the bastions of middle-class urbanism. There are three Gaps within a 10-block radius of Astor Place in Greenwich Village, and there are more and more as you move uptown. No longer can the city claim to be hipper than the suburbs: everyone wears Gap, and every Gap is good.

Step two is to keep Gap expensive enough that everybody can afford it--except those who can't. (The bum on the corner can buy a Coke, but he doesn't have five bucks for a pair of socks.)

The working and under-class urban scene, when fashion penetrates it at all, is gang-inspired fashion: college and professional sports team logos; blue for Crips, red for Bloods. Black and Silver for everyone. Raiders. White Sox. L.A. Kings.

Even the radical, gang-inspired fashion undercurrent of the underclass urban scene (Blue for Crips, red for Bloods, black and silver for everyone--Go Raiders!) percolates up into the middle class. Slumming has always been popular, but even it has been Gapified--reduced to the X hat and the Michael Jordan T-shirt. Gapification is a great neutralizer, stripping violence and excitement from the urban scene.

This is what gives the middle classes, especially the white suburban the middle classes, their false sense of security. They find solace in the evening news, where they see people who don't look like them, don't dress like them and (the rationalization goes) don't live like them. Fleeing from the perverse threats of 8-ball jacket killings and basketball sneaker shootings, these middle classes fall into the safe, open arms of the Gap.

Just as the myth of Bushian politics is that everyone can grow up to be nice and middle-class and President, the myth of Gapified culture is that anyone can wear it and eat it (and be nice and middle class).

At the same time, Gapification assuages that old Republican need to be better than others by guaranteeing that, at some level, someone will not be able to wear it and eat it (and be nice and middle class). It is a standard formula: ideologies which proclaim "All humans can be Gapified" are inverted, becoming "Only the Gapified are human."

Of course the classism of the Gap is not as nasty or brutish as the market can be. But it is classist and deindividualizing and boring and democratic and American. We get the culture we deserve.