What do you know about watered down jazz-pop? It's real. It's easy listening. Have you heard the rampant sameness that plagues new jazz? It's like a pastiche that I can hear from a mile away. Norman Brown is an excellent guitar player, but I can't stand to listen to that sugary, over-saturated production garbage that seemingly took over the industry. Real jazz doesn't have a damn wind chime stroke every third song. There's a place for criticism, and you just picked a really bad example for your case. How bad? Try this on for size:
TED talks are to intellectualism what Kenny G is to jazz.
Sure! The point still stands– I could utter loathe Kenny G, but the fact remains that some people pick up the instrument because they enjoyed Kenny G, and some subset of those people go on to develop an interest in "real jazz", sans over-saturated production garbage and windchome strokes. And some of those people might create music that I would really enjoy.
So I'd argue that Kenny G is good for jazz, and TED is good for the sharing of ideas.
TED talks are to intellectualism what Kenny G is to jazz.