No, it wouldn't. We're allowed to have our own favorites. My favorite remixer is ziwtra. I'm not promoting favoritism or elitism when I say that. I don't really understand how that promotes either, to be honest.
The reason we don't allow favorites threads on the forums has less to do with the site's stance on ratings and more to do with the fact that people just post lists when they should be discussing things. Favorites threads (regardless the topic) always degenerate into lists.
As for blogs, people will be allowed to post their own lists if they'd like. We're not going to discourage that, because blogs aren't discussion threads, they're just thoughts that people want to share.
The point about ratings in the site's mission is the reason we don't have a publicized tracking mechanism for things like ratings and popularity. Those kinds of things are always susceptible to the kind of preferences Larry mentioned. But personal favorites lists don't get tallied and they don't get tracked and consolidated. It's just one person's opinion. If someone wants to express that (staff member or not), they'll be free to do so once the blogs roll out.