Last week the French government made rocker Iggy Pop an Officer of Arts and Letters. Really? Iggy’s cool, but is he really a high-cultural luminary worthy of honors from the French Ministry of Culture? “Iggy’s kudos appear to be utterly serious, as part of an attempt to seem as cool as possible. The further out of style a ministry is, the more it must stretch to ‘get game,’ and incongruous results are almost guaranteed. The problem is not uniquely French…”