Christopher Orlet on popular culture; as he points out, that's a misnomer, but he doesn't stick by any of the labels he thinks up. He divides popular entertainment into "low" (lacking in good taste, or vulgar and boorish), and "high", with which he feels most at home. "High culture" is totally different; it

allows us to "become all we are capable of being; expanding, if possible, to our full growth, which is the law of culture," to bring in Thomas Carlyle

But as he suggests, it demands considerable investment, and it's not something he's going to enjoy 100% of the time. Finally, he blames the USA, which I've got to say is pretty spot-on:

If the U.S. seems backward culturally, it is small wonder. Its democratic leaders give very little weight to high culture; even in its colleges and universities there is little encouragement "to know the best that has been said and thought in the world," as schools have generally moved from educating young men and women to job training. What pittance the government doles out to support the arts often goes to low mass institutions and other forms of popular entertainment, since that is what the majority of voters long for.

There is, I suspect, an undeniable pleasure, a rank smugness in being in the high mass minority, just as I suppose those in the high brow minority are doubly smug. Smugness, to my mind, is a greatly under-rated amusement. If one must be continually annoyed by pop culture - and I see no alternative to this in the near future - one may as well get some pleasure out it.

(via Butterflies and Wheels)