To what extent are TBM/Apologist tastes Brethren-directed?

[_gramps]

Mak wrote:

I'm not dignifying such a stupid comment with a response, nor will I waste any more of my time on this discussion.

There you go, running away again. LOL

The stupid comment was asserting your grammatical superiority, Mak, without even knowing me. That Oxford thing has really gone to your head, hasn't it?

Pop. Pop. Fizz. Fizz.

You really have chosen the perfect avatar for yourself, by the way.

[_Doctor Scratch]

I think that this thread itself is becoming a profound commentary on Dr. Robbers's thesis. In addition to the cuisine- and beverage-related "deficiencies" that have already been sketched out, we can also clearly see how allegiance to the Brethren has grieviously injured the apologists' grasp of humor. They fail to see how funny and absurd it is to have a "24 oz. plastic cup of Dr. Pepper fizzing away at the edge of the plate" in a fine dining restaurant. They are so grimly humorless about all of this that Maklelan is fleeing the thread in an outraged panic, and Dr. Peterson is making absurd comparisons between Mormons, Muslims, and Jews. So: you can add self-reflexive humor to the list of cultural areas in which the apologists are seriously deficient.

So you acknowledge that you and Scratch Junior are simply joking when you suggest that failing to consume alcohol puts anybody at a substantial cultural deficit?

No... Where did I say that?

[_Daniel Peterson]

Cultured is having read the Divine Comedy

Check. Multiple times.

But I've never downed a bottle of Bordeaux while reading it, so I guess it doesn't count.

the Song of Roland

Check.

the Nibelungenlied

Check. Both in translation and in the original Mittelhochdeutsch.

Thus putting the Scratches in a dilemma: Pretentious show-off, or uncultured rube?

and the Shahnameh

Check. Both in translation and, to a certain extent, in the original Persian.

Thus deepening the dilemma of the Scratches. My prediction? I'll turn out to be a noxious blend of pretentious show-off and uncultured rube.

among other classics.

Check. Which, I think, makes me stodgy and vain, according to Scratchite dogma.

the Nibelungenlied (the only part of German culture worth knowing)

This is, of course, nonsense. Goethe's Faust, the Lutherbibel, Martin Luther's Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, the art of Albrecht Dürer, the plays of Schiller, the symphonies of Beethoven, the fugues of Bach, the treatises of Kant, the novels of Thomas Mann, the operas of Wagner, the symphonies of Mozart, the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke . . . these are things that even a genius of your indisputable, peerless, cosmic stature can't really plausibly brush aside.

Wow, maklelan has been a tourist! If that is not cultured, then I do not know what is!

On the whole, to have seen more of the world is better, culturally speaking, than to have seen less of it. Or do you disagree? Have you not traveled much?

[_solomarineris]

They fail to see how funny and absurd it is to have a "24 oz. plastic cup of Dr. Pepper fizzing away at the edge of the plate" in a fine dining restaurant.

You are taking this conversation on a low level now.
No fine restaurant serves any drink with 24 oz. plastic cup unless you are counting Burger King, McDonalds as fine restaurants. What's the big deal about drinking? Some people drink, some people don't. They are not necessarily bound by WoW law.
Until few months ago I used to drink the best beverages money could buy, now I quit and order coke, pepsi. Do you think waiters, people look at me like a fool, because I order pepsi?
Find something better to ridicule Mormons.
Drinking is not a smart subject one should brag about to get ahead in a discussion.
It is OK to have a DrPepper instead of JD on the rock or a Bud.

[_Daniel Peterson]

So you acknowledge that you and Scratch Junior are simply joking when you suggest that failing to consume alcohol puts anybody at a substantial cultural deficit?

No... Where did I say that?

So you're serious, but, if we take you seriously, we're not getting the joke.

Right.

Do you also maintain that failure to drink alcoholic beverages so massively interferes with the dining experience that it puts one at a fatal cultural disadvantage, while declining to eat anything made of pork or crab or lobster or clam or shrimp or produced in a non-kosher kitchen would not significantly interfere with the cuisine one can eat and, accordingly, with one's capacity to become cultured?




.

[_truth dancer]

Just a little FYI...

People who have to brag about being cultured are not cultured.



~td~

[Guest]

If your cultural experiences are actually handicapped by an inability to drink alcohol then you don't really have cultural experiences. You've just had cultural drinks and erroneously conflate culture with drinks.

Drinking wine certainly can be a cultural experience. Culinary art is just that. Food and drink are a meaningful aspect of culture and in the consumption of them one gains an experience of what a culture is like. They are aethestic experiences just as paintings and novels are. If you don't drink, you are cutting yourself off from appreciation of a piece of culture off just the same as a vegetarian who refuses to eat meat does. I don't drink mind you, but I'm at least aware that there is a piece of the world I'm missing out on that involves more than "dulling one's senses." Of course, wine, good wine anyway, is associated with high culture in the same way opera and Milton is. That's why Gadianton choose to go this route. He's in a quasi-troll mode that some people are oddly obtuse about.

Anyway, it's not as though wine is the only thing the LDS church has a significant influence on its members to abstain from. R+ rated content in film and TV is what comes to my mind. And while you might be watching The Wire and appreciating it, the Church clearly does have a suppressing effect on viewing such things among the membership. That is an influence on taste and a (needless I would argue) restraint on what kind of art can be appreciated.

[_Daniel Peterson]

People who have to brag about being cultured are not cultured.

I'm not sure that that's true. Such people might simply be cultured braggarts.

But it's Scratch One and Scratch Two who keep starting up these threads to boast about their impressive familiarity with Bordeaux, Jessica Hagedorn, Haruki Murakami, Bharati Mukherjee, Chinua Achebe, Chang-Rae Lee, Mulatu Astatqe, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Mars Volta, Bat for Lashes, John Wray, In Bruges, and, perhaps my favorite, that edgy, exotic, and precocious young writer Philip Roth (born 19 March 1933, in Newark, New Jersey).

[_Doctor Scratch]

People who have to brag about being cultured are not cultured.

I'm not sure that that's true. Such people might simply be cultured braggarts.

But it's Scratch One and Scratch Two who keep starting up these threads to boast about their impressive familiarity with Bordeaux, Jessica Hagedorn, Haruki Murakami, Bharati Mukherjee, Chinua Achebe, Chang-Rae Lee, Mulatu Astatqe, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Mars Volta, Bat for Lashes, John Wray, In Bruges, and, perhaps my favorite, that edgy, exotic, and precocious young writer Philip Roth (born 19 March 1933, in Newark, New Jersey).

That's not quite accurate. I think the examples you're listing here were simply meant as a counterpoint to the far more stodgy things you and other Mopologists are constantly mentioning. Re: Phillip Roth... Did he stop being cool at some point? Is Portnoy's Complain---or any of Roth's later, bawdier work---something that would go down well with the Brethren?

[_Daniel Peterson]

Re: Phillip Roth... Did he stop being cool at some point?

I have not the slightest idea. You're the one who cares about what's "cool" or not, and who seems to care rather desperately about being thought "cool."

Such nonsense matters to me not at all.