When vulgarity reigns

Today Lileks links to THIS as an example of how language deteriorates.

But his commentary is a continuation of Friday's Bleat:

I am amused by smart people who defend uncouthness on the grounds that it’s honest. (Hypocrisy, after all, is a cardinal sin. Or would be if there were such things.) Dennis Prager was talking today about a dance troupe whose work is mostly base and gross, complete with naughty shocking words and on-stage wanking. They were lauded by critics for their honesty, of course. (The entire cultural top-tier crew, at least in the media, has the values of a Playmate. Turn-offs: Phony people.) I have no problem with the artists, since I don’t expect much from them anymore; those who add to the sum of ugliness are welcome to do so, but they have made themselves irrelevant. I do have a problem with the critics who applaud breaking taboos and stepping over lines, because it’s the cultural establishment – whatever that is – that has celebrated and enabled the decline of art in the 20th century.
No artistic standard, once erased, as has ever been replaced by a more technically demanding one.
Unless you believe that it is harder for a layman to fake a later DeKooning than a J-L David.
Anyway. It’s not so much the redefinition of standards that bothers me as the glee with which the old standards are trashed, and the sense that the arts have become unmoored from the larger culture.
This all sounds like some joyless pinch-arsed mini-me-sized Cotton Mather looking for people who are enjoying themselves so he can wallow in his own righteous bile, eh? I’m just suggesting people govern their tongues in public, and consider that the aesthetic pleasures and artistic merit of a play with some hairy naked dude engaging in self-frottage are less than those provided by “Swan Lake.” The old Keatsian equation. Truth in beauty, and in beauty, truth.
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The Good news: Dustbury points out that Erica Carter can still write aesthetic poetry..
Bad news: She is a computer.
Good news: at her web site, you too can write poetry HERE...