Vasari's history of the renaissance arrogantly and brutally praises the new and "modern" style he himself exemplifies as a painter, and has nothing but contempt for old styles - sneering at the gothic cathedrals we cherish, dismissing anyone in the least bit old-fashioned.
And now Duke Snider is gone too, dead at 84, but still cherished by anyone who saw him play for the Dodgers in Brooklyn.
Art thieves are usually a great disappointment to anyone cherishing romantic fictional ideas of gentleman burglars or fanatical collectors.
Not that I'm suggesting that anyone should cherish his entire oeuvre.
Anyone who cherished 1975's Grey Gardens will know what star quality its subject Edith Bouvier Beale possessed, since she and her mother - two direct cousins of Jackie Onassis – let documentary makers film their squalid, reclusive existence in a crumbling mansion on Long Island.
But anyone who cherishes freedom of speech can have no quarrel with the Bread and Puppet Theater's tendency toward black and white depiction of issues that seem increasingly blanketed in shades of gray.
But to anyone who cherishes rock as the provenance of genuine outcasts, from its African-American founders to the gender-benders and misfits who have dominated its history, Matchbox Twenty seem like interlopers.
This bio-musical about the marital and professional relationship of the German-born composer Kurt Weill and the actress Lotte Lenya, directed by Harold Prince, is sluggish, tedious and (hold your breath) unmissable — at least for anyone who cherishes stars who mold songs into thrilling windows of revelation.
AND now, from the man who brought us, may it R.I.P., Peconika vodka — a vodka that has gone the way of many of the South Fork potato fields that stoked it — comes a nonalcoholic civic venture that Steve Abramson promises will be a visual tonic for anyone who cherishes a more pastoral Hamptons.
That is what the use of "gamer" alone, dressed in pessimism, does for anyone who cherishes video games.
