Are Web Standards truly no more than a catch phrase?

i've been 'off of the scene' for a little while-- the past week at least, having been working on my first Linux installation. Furthermore, i've been pretty busy lately w/ desperately trying to improve my ColdFusion prowess, lest i might be thinking about a new job :twisted: such that i haven't been adhering close to the edge of the goings-on there at the W3C and its ilk. Today, finally coming to terms w/ the fact that i need to move forward or close the files on some deals i've made w/ private 'web clients', i opened up an 'old' Firefox profile for research purposes, only to be distracted from my work by an interesting headline at A List Apart which read To Hell with WCAG 2. 'Sounds pretty shocking!', i thought.

As i began reading through the article, written by Joe Clark, i was indeed startled by what he had to say. But my topic this day is not to focus on the pending issue of the WCAG 2, but to cite something i read when i looked up Clarks seemingly over-zealous use of the word 'standardista'. Unfamiliar w/ the term, and unsure of it, having developed merely a contextual meaning of my own, i decided to do a little 'Googling' to see what the community at large has to say.

I've run out of time to provide my own commentary at this moment, but i wanted my old teachers here at the CSSCreator.com forum to take a look at something that-- let's just say if found equally as unnerving as Clark's article. I immediately thought of my time spent here, learning the basics of CSS (of which i admittedly haven't improved upon much, but such is life), and how largely via discourse and through reading other threads in this forum, and links from this forum, i was introduced to and became what might be considered a catch-phrase of its own: a Web Standards Evangelist. I had to come and show you what i found out there in the big bad real world of capitalism, software merchandising, and as would be relevant, the gerneral, perpetual dumbing-down of modern society.