by HMKGrey » Thu May 18, 2006 10:49 pm
<br>I think gatekeepers float up in American culture and politics quite naturally because you guys don't talk about politics nearly enough. It's a taboo subject for the most part and so it gets compartmentalized in to various strata of knowledge and, inevitably, extremism - even though I'm using that term everso, everso lightly and from both ends of the spectrum. <br> <br>Whenever that happens to anything there will always be people who evolve in to apparent 'gatekeepers' by virtue of having some bits of the picture that other people don't have. They soon start to enjoy some kind of status from this and so they become 'gatekeepers'. If you think about it, they're everywhere. We know the media ones well enough but they're also in our offices, our clubs, our families etc. The media ones just happen to be the ones guarding the really juicy compartments that a lot of people are interested in. <br><br>Look at most corporations. Managers are classic gatekeepers. They know stuff that other less senior employees don't and so they can act on this information all the time to look smarter and more informed - thus the status quo stays the same. <br><br>Interestingly, I do think that companies are evolving away from this and that people are starting to adopt a more plentiful mentality to their work and co-workers but the 'big' media companies are just nowhere on this because they're so horribly entrenched in ridiculous tradition and hierarchies and probably compromised by various agencies too. <br><br>I know TIME very well and, believe me, these people see themselves in an extraordinarily self-important light. The irritating lovey, dovey 'greatest generation' shmooze fests you occasionally glimpse on TV are as nothing to the real thing. <p></p><i></i>
