Mackie wrote:
> *Anarcissie* wrote:
>> Mackie wrote:
>>>> The elite in any given field are the people who produce the best work.
>>>
>>> As if C. Wright Mills had never produced his work; the seminal work for
>>> which he shall always be known? The people who produce the best work
>>> are anything except the elite, because the term has social and
>>> political reference not aesthetic.
>>
>> You and smw are using the word _elite_ in two different
>> ways.
>
> If that was intended to be a summary of merely so much as you reply to,
> then you get an "A" for reading comprehension. Unfortunately, what you
> don't get from such a 'sound byte' is the least notion of what i went
> on to say that really comes down to.
>
> As the Coen Bros. imagined it for the scoundrel, Jerry Lundergard, if
> I may just ace Frances McDormand out of her role as Officer Marge
> Gunderson for a second, I must only conclude that both you and Miss
> Weineck, are "fleeing the interview".
Actually I have been trying to stick to Ilya's proposition,
"Fine arts and philosophy have been slandered as being
luxuries of the elites" because its weird, antique tone
appealed to me. It is everyone else who is fleeing the
interview in quest of being put through a log chipper into
the Minnesota snow. However, to each his own. The
badness of the elites? My, what a shocking thought
you have uttered! We all thought the elites were nice,
and connoisseurs of the best in art, too, didn't we?
>>
>>> And why not aesthetic? Because people of taste, true artists and
>>> lovers of art, unlike social climbers and politicians refuse to
>>> recognize any positive, truly aesthetic application of the word. Those
>>> who use the arts as a means toward attainment of social status have not
>>> the pureness of soul, the integrity to create or recognize great art.
>>> Rather, all they can do is come around places like this singing the
>>> praises of another of their own ilk, some phony such as Pynchon or
>>> Pinter or Proust, forming themselves into that ever-present clique
>>> whose only penchant is to demonstrate their completely clueless lack of
>>> discrimination, or i.e. 'taste', by praising the Emperor's New Clothes.
>>>
>>> Because the Empire of the Elite has power, both of the purse and
>>> politics, i.e. in the publishing and art markets, that is enough and
>>> they can put on such a pretty charade of really being the esoteric lot
>>> of connoisseurs and dabblers they would fancy themselves to be.
>>>
>>> But no! The only thing the elite ever had going for it in this world
>>> is power. So, Mills, despite his politics, had that right, straight
>>> from the gate, and you up there, poor darling Rapunzel, languishing as
>>> ever within the ever so socially correct confines of your ivory tower,
>>> are demonstrating now more often than ever (the few amusing exceptions
>>> aside), how your taste is dictated by the elite Tower Guard and not by
>>> any unbesmirchable sense of the aesthetic whose only requirement is
>>> that she should let down her hair.
