According to an August 4, 2009 Harris poll, the most prestigious occupation is that of firefighter, while near the bottom of the ranking falls that of actor. 62% of the Americans polled voted for firefighters while only 15% voted for actors. At the very bottom of the ranking, however, were realtors, who garnered a measly 5% of the vote.
I don't understand why acting should be held in such low esteem. After all, acting is is not easy to do well, and most of those likely to be polled are familiar with only the very best. Good acting is not only difficult, but also very enriching to all our lives. Consider Martin Landau's work in Woody Allen's masterpiece Crimes and Misdemeanors or Meryl Streep's performance in Sophie's Choice. Those are great movies and the actors in such movies make a profound contribution to the quality of our lives. This is not to deny that most movies are worthless and that many great actors such as Robert De Niro waste their talents on worthless roles in worthless movies.
So why should acting be held in low esteem? But perhaps it is not acting but actors who are held in low esteem. Perhaps it is not actors qua actors who are held in low esteem, but the people who act. What I am suggesting, as a possible explanation of the fact of acting's low rating relative to other professions, is that the people polled conflate actors qua actors with the people who are actors, and project their dislike for these people onto their occupational role.
And why should the people likely to be polled dislike the people who are actors? Because they are most of them flaming liberals who maintain views that are deeply offensive to ordinary Americans. To take an example from a while back, Mike Farrell defended the the vicious murderer 'Tookie' Williams. A very recent example is provided by that profound intellect, Janeane Garofalo, who maintains that the 'tea-baggers,' led by Limbaugh, are a white power movement motivated by 'racism.' Read the the whole of her screed to get a sense of the level of lunacy to which HollyWeird liberals are ever inclined to succumb. I shall not sully my site by quoting it.
Should one take polls seriously? I rather doubt it. Much depends on how exactly the questions are formulated. The Harris 'result' that acting is held in low esteem may reflect only the low esteem in which average Americans hold the people who fill the occupational role.
