Roger Ebert has dropped to the level of a simple-minded college freshman. Arguing whether phenomenon X is or is not art is a fool's errand. Anything, without exception, can be "Art." The problems are 1) "Art" is not definable in any precise, all-encompassing manner even without taking cultural issues into account, 2) perception of something as art or not-art is culturally dependent, and 3) perception of something as art or not-art is subjective and varies among individuals even within a well-defined shared culture. It is a pointless pursuit.
This is a lot like Intelligent Design, whose penis-envy vis a vis science motivates them into trying to disguise spiritual and magical-religious concerns as science. They are not merely wrong, they are pursuing a meaningless, unnecessary, and ultimately pointless goal. Science and religion can easily coexist because their concerns are fundamentally separate. Likewise, anyone's notion of "Art" can coexist with anyone else's because any two individuals will practically always have some amount of intellectual and aesthetic divergence. More often than not, the divergence is quite significant.
