Cultural Omnivore Questions

1. In "Understanding Audience Segmentation: From elite and mass to omnivore and univore," Richard Peterson claims that contrary to previous studies which have claimed that the upper class are elite in their tastes and lower classes like a lot of different low brow entertainment, it is actually opposite in a way. It is now the upper classes which have a wider array of tastes while the lower classes tend to like only one or a couple things. However, he bases this theory primarly on music tastes and the fact that the upper class respondents were far less likely to be able to name one favorite type of music, while the lower class (determined by occupation) could. Is that a good enough measure? Could there results be different if they took into account other measures?

2. In the second article, "Changing Highbrow Taste:From Snob to Omnivore," Peterson and Kern discuss some of the reasons for the shift from elitism to omnivorism. Are there reasons comprehensive? As I was reading the list, I kept thinking of the whole atmosphere of change in our country surrounding how important and politically correct it has become to be open-minded.

3. As I was thinking about the high culture versus low culture, I couldn't help thinking about independent cinema, and how even though one of their characteristics is poor film quality and low budget (something which might be considered low culture), there is a certain high culture attached to liking independent cinema (at least in my opinion). How might this new theory of culture discussed in these two articles account for it?

4. The articles talk about how ominovirism is replacing snobbery among the high class, but I wonder if there really isn't as much difference between the two as the authors would have us believe. Could not omnivorism be a new form of snobbery? While obviously omnivorism isn't exclusive in the classical sense, doesn't it in effect still distinguish them from the lower cultures, and isn't that overall the purpose of elitism?