Is this at all interesting?

[oursin]

Of course they'd rather sit back with Plato's Symposium or Frege's theorem, but intellectuals have some less elevated tastes, too - cable TV wrestling or rap, anyone? Philip Oltermann confers with some great brains about their guilty pleasures.

Note how they tend to say something that proves they are 'just folks' (or in spite of their Grayt Braynz

Comments

[slemslempike]

Rather tragically, Giddens' attempt at just one of 'us'/real MEN connection through wrestling ends with this:
Even more ridiculous, when there is a commercial break, the programme solemnly informs the viewer, "Whatever you do, don't try this at home." Do they seriously think people would?

which seems to place him far further outside than merely being a sociologist. But I do rather love the mathematician who sorted his football team by getting them to play in prime numbers.

[tree_and_leaf]

I hate to admit it, but I quite enjoyed Roger Scruton's response.

he secret highbrow intellectual interests (sneaking into the opera heavily disguised, hiding Wittgenstein inside the cover of a chicklit novel...) of people who are celebrated for their, er, non-cerebral achievements? (Or don't they have them?)

There was the Chelsea footballer who read the Gaurdian, but that doesn't quite count, I don't think.

[oursin]

Except the mental vision of Scruton boogying to Elvis is, well, terrifying.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, but I still have this awful urge to smuggle a ghetto blaster into one of his lectures and play 'Jailhouse Rock'...

[ironed_orchid]

And yet they mostly manage to sound pompous about whatever pursuit is their guilty pleasure. I like Zizek's answer, though.

[oursin]

Knowing Steve Jones (slightly) I am deeply amused by the image of him staring into estate agents' windows.

[wordweaverlynn]

I refuse to feel guilty about any of my pleasures. Not even boxed macaroni and cheese or lustfully reading real-estare ads. I used to read seed catalogues like porn, too, but that pleasure was based on the contrast between the pages of voluptuous fruit and flowers and the deep snow and cold of winter. Last date of frost where I grew up: June 15. Most years around here we don't have any frost at all, and the roses bloom twelve months a year.

Anyway, what's so guilt-worthy about baseball?

I may be some time

[oursin]

There's a lovely piece by Katherine Whitehorn about sitting snuggled up by a nice warm fire with a cup of tea or something stronger, and reading books about Antarctic exploration.

Re: I may be some time

[wordweaverlynn]

I haven't run across that piece; I'll have to look for it. I have a lifelong fascination with Antarctic (and Arctic) exploration, and I adore Katherine Whitehorn.

I was tickled to notice, last time I saw "Help!", that the Beatles brought up Oates as an example of admirable self-sacrifice. It was an offhand reference with no explanation; clearly they assumed that everybody would know who Oates was and why he was worth mentioning.

[hafren]

If I felt guilty about anything, it wouldn't be a pleasure.

I love country music, but not the same stuff Stanley Fish does, nor for the same reasons (I like its politiical subversiveness; they way it's on the side of working men, prisoners, outsiders, fallen women - at least the strand of it that I listen to, which is basically Cash-Nelson-Jennings-Harris-Parton). I wouldn't even think of feeling guilty about it.