A Quote by Mary Beard
Whatever you say about popular culture, people like people who know things, who are experts, and it doesn't particularly matter what they look like.
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If you look at the works psychologists have done about individual reports of wellbeing, what happens is that if you're poor, you are not happy. But once you achieve a certain level of material satisfaction then income has very little correlation with people's reported states of happiness, things like climate matter more, things like the culture of the country in which you're raised matter more and so the things really, let's face it, like individual temperament matter more than these things.
No matter what people say, about what I did, about what I am like... They say you are not dedicated or hardworking. A lot of people say things about me, but they don't realise I have played 250 games. It's not like you just land up in the team, sit down and play 250 games. You can't survive like that in international cricket.
Sports is like literature. People watch it and if it's beautiful and it's non-violent, whatever messages that you see, people can read into it and say, "Wow! You know what? Whatever they're doing over there, it's extraordinary, and maybe that culture is superior to ours in certain ways."
People say bad things about me. I've had people tell me, "You know, Rush, I've been telling people to listen to you and listen to you, and I finally get 'em to do it, and then you say something so offensive, and they look me, 'You listen to this?' And I'm tired of defending you, Rush. Why do you say stupid things?" I know what this is like.
Every human being in this world is interested in certain things. Everybody has a hobby. Some people like art; I know nothing about it. Some people like books, some people like fishing, some people like music. I like to look at cars.
Look, I'm not a perfect person. I have my warts. I sometimes say things that get me in trouble. I wear suits that are cheap. But I say what I think and I believe what I say, and I'm willing to say things that are not popular but ordinary people know are right.
I'm not very nostalgic, you see. I just don't think anybody has that kind of thing anymore. By culture, by breeding, by whatever, it's not there. The kids today-what the hell are they going to be? I like young people - yes, I do. But when I talk to people at the schools, and they say, "I saw you on the Twit," I don't even know what they are talking about.
Popular culture as a whole is popular, but in today's fragmented market it's a jostle of competing unpopular popular cultures. As the critic Stanley Crouch likes to say, if you make a movie and 10 million people go see it, you'll gross $100 million - and 96 per cent of the population won't have to be involved. That alone should caution anyone about reading too much into individual examples of popular culture.
What I like about popular culture is its accessibility, and I've covered popular songs because they are amazing things.
I like writing about popular culture. It helps to place people. I think you can be really, really accurate if you know enough about it, and place people precisely.
I would like to say in defense of the Christian religion that there are nice things about it. There really are. And Marilyn can tear up the Bible all he wants and I understand why, but... there's good things in the Bible. Good things. Like about, you know, not killing people, and... you know... not sleeping with people's husbands.
People say to the mentally ill, ‘You know so many people think the world of you.’ But when they don’t like themselves they don’t notice anything. They don’t care about what people think of them. When you hate yourself, whatever people say it doesn’t make sense. ‘Why do they like me? Why do they care about me?’ Because you don’t care about yourself at all.
Particularly beautiful people were like particularly funny-looking people, though. Once you know them you mostly forgot about it.
I feel like I've started to create my own culture of being a voice for something, and that's what people want to know about. I love that because I am a woman and because I a rap, and I look the way I look, I can connect with the demographic of people who feel like they have a voice in me.
I think there ought to be some serious discussion by smart people, really smart people, about whether or not proliferation of things like The Smoking Gun and TMZ and YouTube and the whole celebrity culture is healthy. We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics - trying to play a serious part in the world - to a culture that's really entertainment-based. I mean, I know people who can tell you who won the last four seasons on American Idol and they don't know who their [bleeping] Representatives are.
People feel like they know you because they've read about you, and people who don't know me seem to have warm feelings about me. I seem to be popular with women. I go into the loo in restaurants, and they all say, 'Oh, I love you.' It's odd, but it's really nice, too.
