"It doesn't need a big intellectual justification"

You know what I really hate? I really hate the word "tastemaker." More than that, I really hate people who would ever refer to themselves as "tastemakers." It's even more loathsome than calling yourself "a rock star," which as you know is saying something.

So I think this quote from House Beautiful's Stephen Drucker is kinda amazing: "What really has happened is: everybody is involved in every decision. Nobody says, 'I want that decorator's look, give it to me.' Everybody is involved, and you never know who's going to do what. A person with all the money in the world can get their kicks from painting a room themselves. A person who has more modest means can go out now and buy a $5,000 or $10,000 bathtub because that's what their dream is. It's the high/low thing that happened in fashion -- there really are no rules anymore. The only rule is that people do it their way, and you have to give people a lot of choice. You used to be able to tell people what that was, and now people really want to choose."

Is that the anti-tastemaker manifesto? Instead of being a tastemaker, is it better to be a choice-giver? A choice-editor? It has parallels for brands, right? Maybe even for news organizations and I dunno what else.

Then there's this, Drucker's approach to copy: "Look at our magazine; it is a Q&A magazine. It's very deliberately not about formal writing and word-smithing. It's about good ideas and straight talk, and the way people say it is the way we print it."