Intellectual Snobbery

I was just looking at my last post and thinking am I a bad mother to encourage my son to watch such bad tv? the truth is that in our house we embrace both high and low culture - but with a limit. For instance we sometimes watch Neighbours but we never watch other soaps like Eastenders or Coronation Street. We watch comedy but usually things like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Spaced or Alan Partridge. Is this some kind of intellectual snobbery I wonder - I suppose it probably is.

It's interesting because I came across a lot of this kind of snobbery whilst doing my assignment on media book clubs - for instance chat shows are considered low culture, but they sometimes feature high brow books - some critics say that this devalues the book in some way. I would disagree with this surely it doesn't matter who is reading a book but what they are getting out of it that matters? and as for low brow TV - don't you have to watch it sometimes so that you have a stick to measure the rest by?