printBelow is an excerpt from the current weekly column, Pimping The Culture, now on WND.
“The marketplace doesn’t adjudicate the quality of art or pop culture—it does no more than offer an aggregate snapshot of the trillions of subjective preferences acted upon by consumers. That snapshot, in 2013, tells us that when it comes to “Bread and Circuses,” Rome and its provinces wallow in the same lowbrow popular culture.
Incidentally, to judge the quality of a cultural product is not to begrudge the preferences of the people who purchase it. It is simply to apply timeless, objective standards in assessing these products. …
… By and large, when it comes to entertainment, the people and the elites are on the same empty page—most of the musicians whose products they patronize, or with whom they fraternize, can’t read music, much less play it.
‘Grammy and Academy Award winner’ Jennifer Hudson, to whose primal screams the president and first lady attempted to dance, doesn’t sing; she screams. Voice coaches once considered the Hudson brand of ‘vocal wobble’ a deficiency in technique and talent. But then, ‘Why be a musician, when you can be a success?’ Such cacophony currently plays to full houses. It is to their credit that the First Couple smoothed the noise over with some smooth moves. …
… More sounds that curdled the air were those of Alicia Keys pounding on the piano keys. …
… I’d rather listen to the dodecaphony of twelve-tone music than sit through the guttural battle cries emitted by today’s entertainers. …”
The complete column is Pimping The Culture, now on WND.
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UPDATE (Jan. 24): No fan of mine (or my column), the writer below, says the in-house studio musician, is “Obviously a nirvana fan…”
From: Daniel G
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 9:59 AM
To: imercer@wnd.com
Subject: anywho
“Typical prog fan, putting other people down because their favorite musicians don’t use 20 sided dice to choose their time signatures.”
HERE’S the good (non-nirvana) stuff: