The Over/Under on Underrated Oeuvres

While I am, as you may have noticed, a big fan of context, I also think that "overrated" and "underrated" are two of the less interesting concepts in criticism. Joe Posnanski adeptly demonstrates the problems with "underrated" as a long-term reputation.

Underrated is a Zen place to be. What I mean by that is you can only be underrated for as long as people do not notice that you are underrated. Once someone starts calling you underrated, you begin to lose your footing. When enough people start calling you underrated, you stop being underrated. And when you become known as the “most underrated anything,” well, the jig is up.

Overrated has slightly different problems. When you say something is overrated, there is a risk that what you are actually saying is that you object to other people enjoying it. It actually directs your point away from whatever it is you object to, and makes it an attack on the fans. Here's the thing: fans are easy targets. You can find idiots in favor of nearly anything; it's very easy, in any sort of public debate, for both sides to trot out opposing idiots as straw men.

The nice thing about this as a logical fallacy is that the designated idiot has no doubt committed all manner of extravagant crimes against logic in the first place, making yours look not so bad. Of course, what happens in the end is that both sides feel free to ignore each other, and you get a nice display of pomp and fury without the risk of any real communication occurring.

An example: Rush Limbaugh is not really worth paying attention to. Some would say he's a big fat idiot. That is perhaps not productive discourse, but I feel relatively comfortable saying that Limbaugh is not acting in good faith. But, for some reason, Limbaugh has been big news lately. He seems to have a certain amount of clout in the GOP, but it's hard to say for sure -- maybe he's just easier to spot nowadays due to the lack obvious leadership in the GOP. But anointing him leader of the GOP is actually an advantage for the Democrats, because it makes the Republicans look crazy. And the gist of the argument becomes, "Rush Limbaugh is overrated." While this is politically useful, it has the downside of focusing even more attention on Limbaugh. So he becomes a bigger deal, gets more coverage, and increasing the perception that he's overrated.

Along the same lines is the practice of reading about celebrities in order to feel outraged at how much coverage they receive. Some people are "famous for being famous," but even originally noteworthy people are sometimes swallowed up by their own fame. Arguably, I am contributing to the problem even now.

But back to my main point: while the mechanisms of these cultural feedback loops are interesting, the contents themselves rarely are. When you claim something is overrated, you're giving a large, nebulous group of people control of the context. While in some cases the overrating has its own significance -- Limbaugh being overrated translates into real political power, for example -- it's still peripheral to the core argument. Eventually, you have to get down the business of explaining why he's wrong (I am assuming, for the purpose of argument, that you can find something to disagree with Rush Limbaugh about).

EDIT: And after that, you have to get down to the real business of explaining why you're right.