@ Skybird - massive walls of text and a lot of spirited hat and cane work, but the core question remains unanswered.
Who gets to decide what is crap?
The majority? It obviously can't be the majority, because they are already deciding, and they clearly like their crap, thank you very much. It is the majority that brings you Britney Spears and Mariah Carey and reality shows and McDonald's and all the other cultural sins you despise. In your world view, the majority can't be trusted to choose wisely, so their choices should be limited (oh, for their own good, of course).
So if it isn't the majority that decides, it must by definition be some minority. No doubt better educated, wiser, more culturally attuned than the great unwashed majority.
The idea of a minority elite making decisions for the majority against their will is not a form of government that I want. I would rather live in a world of Britney Spears - which I don't have to listen to - than in a world where some Minister of High Culture tells me I can't watch The Three Stooges, which I like, because it doesn't meet his snooty definition of adding cultural value.
This reminds me very much of the situation unfolding in Thailand. The majority - largely the underclass of uneducated farmers - overwhelmingly elected a prime minister and his party in a fully free election. The minority - mostly the upper middle class, urbanites, and the cultural elite - hated him. Some of their hatred is clearly legitimate, but the guy was elected and his popularity was very high. After getting repeatedly trounced in free elections, the elites, now partnered with the army, rolled the tanks through Bangkok and kicked the democratically elected prime minister out in a coup.
Unsurprisingly, the media - composed of course not of farmers but of the cultural elite - applauded the move. It seems they preferred having their political and cultural point of view being the dominant one - even if it meant the destruction of democracy. They constantly defend the coup - and the destruction of the constitution - by claiming that the majority is simply not educated enough to vote "correctly."
Not me. Freedom first. I'd rather have Britney Spears than someone telling me I can't have Britney Spears - even if I agree that Britney is crap.
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