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Game Of Thrones Is Bad -- And Bad For You. Otherwise Known As: Erstwhile Conservative Writer Is Actually A Nagging Little Leftist

It doesn't matter what you think of Game of Thrones, because our betters (in this case a snot-nosed punk with ironic facial hair and a receding hairline) have decided that it is not fit for your consumption. Never mind that Game of Thrones is a TV SHOW! It's fiction. It is meant to be consumed not as an allegory, or a guidebook for future conduct, or even as wish-casting for the nerds he waxes insultingly about. It is meant to be consumed as a diversion, as a pause in our real lives, but this humorless toad just doesn't get it.

But the real problem with Game of Thrones is not that it is, like most American popular culture these days, fundamentally adolescent. It is that it is obscene. It is not just bad art; it is art that is bad and bad for you.

And this is how we got Trump. In this case a preening, pompous arrogant elite who claims to be Catholic but is amazingly quick to judge (didn't some guy named - ironically - Matthew warn you folks about that?) is telling us what is good for us and bad for us. But Americans are just a bit tired of being told what to do and what to think, even by "conservatives."

Popular culture in the English-speaking world is in the grips of a downward nerd-driven death spiral. Outside of the art-house theaters of our major cities it is almost impossible to find more than one semi-decent film a month that is not an adaptation of some decades-old picture book franchise about men in rubber costumes punching each other. The average video game player is more than 30 years old. The only book that most Americans between the ages of 23 and 40 seem to have read whose title does not begin with some variation of "Harry Potter and the” is a fable about talking animals that they were assigned in middle school. Things are bad.

Ah yes..."art-house theater." Because art must have a message, and only our elites are sufficiently aware to be able to interpret those messages. Bow down before your betters! Never mind that "popular culture" has always catered to the least-common denominator. And that's okay. I like raucous, escapist, thoroughly forgettable diversions as much as the next guy. I also have the intellectual capacity to discern between reality and entertainment, something that Matthew Walther clearly doesn't have.

Look, it doesn't matter whether you like Game of Thrones, and judging by the comments over the years many of you don't. But has anyone suggested that it has some evil intent, some nefarious message that will drive the coarsening of the culture? No, because most of us are sort of adult about our entertainments, and understand that it is fiction. And even more than that, the suggestion that it is "bad for you" is risible, because while many evil and manipulative and cruel characters are successful, it is also clear within the story that their behavior is not acceptable outside of the context of realpolitik. So I am not even sure what the hell this guy is talking about.

Actually, I do know exactly what he is talking about. He thinks he is smarter and better and more aware and better educated and more sophisticated than any of you.