Kurt Andersen wrote an intriguing essay in last weekend's NYT Book Review about the current status of pop culture. He argues that Barack Obama is the penultimate user, creator, disseminator and exemplar of pop culture, and therefore we now live in an age when it makes no sense to segregate the "high" from the "low."
Furthering his point, Andersen says that since the old benchmarks of low brow entertainment (he sites scripted TV series as an example) no longer claim an audience big enough to be called "mass" or "popular," our fractured likes and dislikes would be better categorized as being either "well made" or "shoddy."
In essence, it's an argument that we should judge something (or someone) by its function and whether it fully delivers and embodies what it is meant to be, regardless of point of origin, purchase price or location, or whether you feel that that the thing in question is necessary and essential. (US Weekly certainly is NOT necessary or essential, but, boy, does it deliver as a tabloid.) Obama by breaking a racial barrier many thought impenetrable, has proven the merits of such thinking in spades.
Read "Pop Culture in the Age of Obama" by Kurt Andersen here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/books/review/Andersen-t.html
