May 25, 2005: Thanksgiving balls

I hate to be a nag here, but....where are the blogs?

well since I am big brutish and in your face I will drop a little science, not even for pity's sake, but because I want to. I'm just that cold and funky, like James Brown's Out of Sight. And yes, as of writing, that is me who has it checked out from the library.

The thing is, when people don't write things, it's not that I think they are lazy or busy, I assume they are boring. and that is bad news bears, I hope?
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An interesting sort of meta-debate I have been seeing across many forms of everything is something like "elitists vs. populism." I saw it today in an article I read on the collectors world's natural opposition to designers who contract with major companies (look at Target ads and this might make more sense). I have seen it in some of the reaction towards Blink, a book I recently finished. Other people have mulled upon this subject as well.

But I think this speaks to a much larger sort of divide. I distinctly remember some conversation where I argued with someone the merits/dismerits of a book such as the DaVinci Code, a book whose major criticism is in its supposed pandering towards simpletons, or something like that. The question would be, should we be dumbing down or turning up our noses (figuratively of course)?

There are some grave intellectual trends implied here, that somehow an intellectual ruling class has the right to judge (or not) the "unwashed masses." But at the same time one cannot ignore the blatantly negative effects of dumbing down.

I guess my feelings depend largely on the situation; there are definite benefits to making something more widely available, and I feel as if this is possible without significantly altering content (in a given piece of art or information). But this responsibility to the actual content must be maintained, lest populist intentions create even more reason for end user/viewer/reader watering-down.

the two opposing examples I would draw and make fight in an arena would be the Académie Française and anything of the Sparknotes variety