Labelwhore

No, I'm not talking about the Blogger labels feature. From Folio Weekly in Jacksonville, Florida, came this item:

Making artistic, themed scrapbooks is a $2.6 billion industry in the U.S. (nearly one-fifth as large as the adult-video industry) and has a "Hall of Fame" as protective of its morals as baseball's, which has shunned gamblers and steroid users. According to a January Wall Street Journal report, one "superstar" scrapbooker, Kristina Contes, was recently kicked out of the hall for violating etiquette by displaying another's photo inside her scrapbook in a competition. Contes said the oversight was inadvertent but that she is now shunned within the community for her grave offense and is called "labelwhore."

What do you say to that? I actually think the scrapbooking industry is worse for America than adult-videos (assuming they don't involve children, which I would not endorse in any form). Scrapbooking is another of those seemingly-sweet American institutions, like cheerleading or Little League baseball, that spouts a bunch of draconian rules because basically, people like to tell other people what to do and think. Now I wouldn't consider scrapbooking "art" no matter what...not my thing. But it isn't my job to tell people what constitutes "art" and what doesn't. I don't think Thomas Kinkaid makes art either, but millions of people disagree. Fine. But I'm SURE it doesn't qualify as art if the governing body tells you what you can and cannot do with your art.