You certainly have a point. It doesn't make me hate the terms any less, though.

People laughing at folk has been going on since there was folk. The earliest attempt at a folk music collection in Europe was Johann Gottfried Herder's in 1778. He coined the term "Volkslied" ("folksong") in 1771. If you read his introduction, his ideas anticipate those of much later folklorists. Unfortunately, he ran into a lot of criticism and was especially affected by a parody of his collection by Nikolaus Lenau, and ended caving in and changing his methods and criteria and finally getting out of the folk business entirely.

Am I right that you are in the US? In Germany, there is folk on the radio, though only on the public stations. I mean "folk" in the sense meant on this forum in general and not German "Volksmusik", which is a whole other topic. Of course, there are radio stations that play that music and it's on TV. There are still groups that play in a traditional style and I like that music very much, but most of it has very little to do with traditional music and is, in my opinion, awful, with keyboards, full playback and tons of compression.

It's very wrong to marinate kids in current pop. I recommend a mixture of white wine, olive oil, garlic, salt and red pepper.