When I first became aware of YouTube a couple of years ago, I was mildly amused. Sort of like a personal version of America's Funniest Home Videos. Over time, I have seen YouTube as an interesting place to learn and research things. There are some videos out there of incredible talent. A friend recently told me of the guitar mastery of Phil Keaggy and, yep, I could find him on YouTube.

Increasingly, though, YouTube seems to be a place of really stupid and even downright bad (as in immoral) videos. Now that they are posting shots of and links to videos currently being watched by others, it really isn't a "safe" place for anyone to hang out.

A few weeks ago, George Lucas contrasted "art" and the "circus," saying that YouTube is the "circus". Many people are calling him to task saying that the circus can be art. They are, I feel splitting hairs and missing his point ... a point which I find to be very valid.

Here's what Lucas said. Any thoughts?

“Circus is random and voyeuristic. What you see on YouTube right now — I call it feeding Christians to the lions. The movie term is, throwing puppies on a freeway. You don’t have to write anything or do anything — you just have to sit there, and it’s interesting. Like American Idol. Just put a camera on your neighbor’s window and see what happens. Then you get to art — where a particular person contrives a situation and tells a story, and hopefully that story reveals a truth behind the facts. With voyeurism all you’re getting is the facts.”