Media categories are so rigid nowadays. As a result, most critics are only allowed to focus on half of the culture business. Some only embrace highbrow culture—they live with Shakespeare, not Netflix originals. Others just focus on pop culture, because, hey, it’s happening now. Aristotle had his day, and now we need Taylor Swift. I don’t see the world divided like that. The interconnections between highbrow and popular culture run deeper than most people realize. But even more to the point, we need both in our society. I feel I have a responsibility to both. As a critic, I try to keep alive the great works from the past—especially because this legacy is fragile and at risk. But I also give respect to the best popular culture of the current day. Some of these commercial efforts will eventually become classics in their own right. In other words, we need to learn from the past. But we can’t live in the past. So I will always love Bach and all those other old fuddy duddies. I will never roll over Beethoven, and will pay Tchaikovsky his dues. But I still seek inspiration from the popular culture that has surrounded me during my lifetime. Below I write about six of my heroes. If you want to support my work, please take out a premium subscription (just $6 per month).Anthony BourdainWhen Anthony Bourdain died, I felt I’d lost someone close to me. That’s ridiculous, of course—I never met him, and we lived in completely different worlds. But others felt that same connection. And for a good reason. Bourdain didn’t act like a TV celebrity. I sometimes wonder how he ever got on TV in the first place—he never delivered lines, and what he said on air did not sound like a professional script. It was better than that. His online commentaries were so smart, unfiltered, and expressive that somebody must have taken great care over them. But that person was Anthony Bourdain himself. He somehow achieved total personal expression via a mass market TV show.  As many of you know, I’m skeptical of political discourse. It’s so degraded in our day. But Bourdain’s interview with Obama at a diner in Hanoi completely redefined the rules of presidential interviews—it was a real conversation with no spin or games played. And Bourdain established that natural give-and-take so effortlessly. If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have thought it possible.  Bourdain achieved this in every setting in every country. And he visited plenty of them—more than 80, I’m told. I can’t imagine a more ideal ambassador. One who listens more than he talks. One who has such strong core values—but never lets that prevent him from learning and expanding his horizons. He worked inside the system, but the system never owned him. It hardly seemed to touch him. So Bourdain always came across as more real, more honest, more trustworthy than other media stars. Every time I saw him, I asked myself: How can I learn from this? I’m still trying to do that... Keep reading with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to The Honest Broker to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. A subscription gets you:
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