I have a feeling the line won't be very controversial among my lj friends, but it does make its point clearly and forcefully, more so than I've seen the point made. Deserves to become a meme.
My favorite bit of that is the related point that KNOWLEDGE TAKES EFFORT. The idea that good music criticism takes work, and that some people demonstrably do more work (physically and/or intellectually) than others (and tend to, though don't always, do better music criticism than those who don't), moves us away from itself strawmannish "fairness" and toward something probably more productive. I can see how the idea, used poorly, could justify an attitude that says that (say) knowing more bands = "know more about music," but as long as we identify what rigorous intellectual practices look like, it's a useful thing to think about when judging what building knowledge really looks like.
I'd like to know where in music criticism you see something like Paul Krugman's anti-(inverse?) strawman (I like calling 'em "realboys"), crediting knowledge-effort where it isn't due.
And I say that ("looking for realboys") because one thing a realboy does is force us to say, well, OK, these people are being credited with reasonable ideas they don't hold -- but what happens when you actually adhere to those (perhaps good) ideas? The conservative who actually held the positions claimed of them would probably be good and interesting thinkers. They probably wouldn't be called "conservatives," but what they're called isn't really the issue.
I said "effort" rather than "work," because it's fun* for me (though would be work for many others), is like completing crossword puzzles is for puzzle fanciers and mastering a videogame is for someone into videogames.
*The word "fun" may miss some of the nuances: sometimes the endeavor is compulsive, often it doesn't bring fast gratification, sometimes it's like crossing the desert. In any event, the nature of the fun/effort/work is testing ideas, other people's and one's own, and that's the effort that musicwrite people generally don't know how to make. More crucially, it's an effort that the musicwrite community doesn't know how to make.
Well, I'm using work fairly broadly here -- and anyway I thrive when I feel like I'm doing work! That is to say, I tend to have more fun when I'm working.
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Alignment problem should be fixed now.
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I'd like to know where in music criticism you see something like Paul Krugman's anti-(inverse?) strawman (I like calling 'em "realboys"), crediting knowledge-effort where it isn't due.
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*The word "fun" may miss some of the nuances: sometimes the endeavor is compulsive, often it doesn't bring fast gratification, sometimes it's like crossing the desert. In any event, the nature of the fun/effort/work is testing ideas, other people's and one's own, and that's the effort that musicwrite people generally don't know how to make. More crucially, it's an effort that the musicwrite community doesn't know how to make.
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