My point, exactly. Albeit bad taste is universal, it is not intrinsic to the working masses. Stated differently, nothing but the lack of exposure prevents the working masses from learning how to appreciate the high culture.
I think that was the original point of the left and labor movements in Europe cf. Le Corbusier plans for housing for working class or the early Soviet avant garde. Similar attitudes were expressed by early Black civil rights advocates who tried to gain entry to the "white" high culture, often at a great personal risk.
But somehow that message was lost to the vulgar populism of the "lumpen-kultur ueber alles" variety. I think this was done independently in the USSR and US. In the USSSR - avant garde was cast as "degenerate" and "bourgeois" and replaced by homey crudeness supposedly characteristic of the masses. The Nazis made essentially the same move.
In the US, "high culture" was always a suspect by both right and left alike - accused of 'elitism' and 'foreign influence.' However, following the Great depression and the new Deal, the left wholeheartedly embraced populist and workerist aesthetic at the expense of advancing the economic interests of the working masses. Today the Kulturkampf over pop-culture boils exponentially more red blood than the measures that hurt the working masses economically (e.g. the passage of the new bankruptcy law went almost unnoticed even on this list, while each time I utter "rap-crap" or "trailer trash" this list is bombarded with spirited defenses).
The net effect of that change of heart was not only legitimation of lumpen-kultur aesthetically, but also politically by casting it as a goal in itself that is equally if not more important than other goals, especially the betterment of the material living conditions.
Wojtek