I am sure Porteno's watch plenty of TV.
But I live near Seattle, a city of approximately 1 million- and there are more bookstores in my neighborhood of Barrio Norte than there are in all of Seattle. And most of the bookstores in Seattle these days are Barnes and Noble type superstores, with a truly lowbrow selection.
This is repeated throughout the USA- bookstores have been closing at a rapid pace for the last ten years or more.
In Seattle, there is not a single outdoor book bazaar- I know of three in Buenos Aires, and I am sure there are more. Seattle has two magazine stands of any quality. BsAs, hundreds.
So regardless whether or not Portenos actually read more, I, personally, can find more books there. If you havent lived in the USA recently, or had kids in school there, then you might not know how many houses here have NO books, no interest in reading.
Similarly, live music, theater, poetry, performance, dance, art shows, and other cultural pursuits are all daily events in BsAs- and virtually nonexistent in many US cities outside of New York.
Americans, for example, dont read newspapers anymore- and when USA Today is your national paper, its hard to blame em. But Argentinians read lots of em.
Again, I dont think Argentina is paradise. Lots wrong with it, no doubt. But it is definitely more intellectual than most parts of the USA. Try conversing with a cab driver in the US sometime about philosophy. The Portenos I know, my friends there, are all awake, aware, and concerned about the world. Of course there are lots of vegetative people in BsAs as well- I just dont hang out with em.
I do think that the famed Porteno inferiority complex, the "Culo del Mundo" syndrome, means that a lot more Portenos actually pay attention to what goes on elsewhere in the world. I meet many who have travelled, who try extra hard to keep up with music, or art, or literature from europe or the US, because they consider BsAs to be so behind- and, in a way, they actually disprove their own theory.
Believe me, the average american has never left his or her home state, much less travelled abroad.
But back to the original question- I think a few more people may leave the USA if McCain is elected, but not really too many. Even in troubled economic times, the money in the US flows pretty freely, and most people are pretty fat and sassy.
I do see a gradual awakening among the people I know, however, more and more every year, about BsAs as a destination for travel, and a few of those travellers will stay.
The Euro and the Pound are crazily expensive against the dollar right now, and travelling in europe is beyond the reach of many americans. Hotels under 100 euros are impossible to find in most european cities, meals under $20 to $50 per person, and so Argentina seems a bargain to many of my friends. I noticed a large crowd of americans, for instance, in town for ArteBA this year- and not just clueless tourists, but art professionals who are looking seriously at the art scene in BsAs.
With increasing globalisation of culture, with the internet, Argentina is less and less an undiscovered backwater, and more and more an international player, in fashion, music, design, architecture, graffiti, art, literature, and so on, and this will lead to many more people visiting and moving.
So I see this as an ongoing trend, not a specific jump due to an election.
