Subversive? Harry Potter. Titanic. Madonna... It's all subversive, alright. You should take a page from Andie's book and join me in being elitist and take pride in not being able to get through this sort of mass consumption pulp! ;-)
The problem I have with Andie's post above is the question begging. Andie, before we can say things like "accomplishment deserves honor [sic]", we have to address the issue of what accomplishment is and where it gains identity in a continuous spectrum of activity. I have been around long enough now that I have seen the reality behind the celebration of various "accomplished individuals" (e.g: "Tim Berners- Lee is the father of the Web!", "XYZ was awarded the Nobel Prize", etc) ... and frankly, it's mostly a joke.
But really, there are two issues, I believe, at play here: the idea of the relation of skill to recognition, and the separate idea of the distribution and value of skills. Andie writes that he has no problem with individuals being better than other individuals at certain things. I would say though that that would be entirely agreeable if everyone was better than everyone else at some particular thing -- some particular thing that is of value. What offends the sensibility of equality (of outcome) is the idea or possibility that some people are better than a whole lot of others at things that matter greatly (in a particular scheme) and that a whole lot are good at nothing much (of value by that same scheme) at all.
--ravi