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| From | "Stewart Mason" <craigtorso@verizon.net> |
| Subject | Re: Guilty Pleasures |
| Date | Sat, 03 Feb 2007 16:14:05 -0500 |
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Marty Rudnick" <mrudnick@marturo.com>
> Thanks Stewart. I'm grateful that there are people like you in the
> world to put me in my place.
> Anybody else wanna take a shot at me?
Marty, I'm genuinely sorry if anything I've said in reponse to this
thread came across as a personal slight. I can't speak for Mike or
anyone else who's participated in this thread, but my own intent is
simply to say that I find the concept of the guilty pleasure
needlessly self-restrictive, and that I think people should like what
they like without fear of mockery. I absolutely did not mean that as
a personal attack.
See, my own take on the phrase is that calling something a guilty
pleasure implies that I'm ashamed to admit I like something, and so it
comes across as needlessly defensive.
It's very akin to the entire concept of, "Oh, I don't *really* like
what I'm listening to, I'm being all clever and ironic and
post-modern," which is an attitude that is always guaranteed to drive
me up the wall. Seriously, there's a DJ on the local college station
that I like, and she has this weekly spotlight called "the cheese of
the week," where she plays like, some old '80s hair metal song and
sniggers about it. And that just drives me nuts, because either she
really likes the song -- in which case she should just play it and
enough with the self-protective irony! -- or she really does genuinely
hate that form of music, in which case...well, why on earth is she
playing it? I mean, I dislike most contemporary mainstream country
music, but I don't force myself to listen to it to remind me of how
much I hate it!
S
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