Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I would disagree that celebrity worship is benign most of the time. I think that it creates a bizarre, mass inferiority complex for anyone who falls for these corporate machinations. It makes those of us who have modest talents and might otherwise enjoy them constantly compare our accomplishments with heights of success and attention that are unattainable for most people. It distracts us from issues that really affect our lives and it destroys talented artists in order to endlessly sell us stuff--magazines, records, T shirts, WTF-ever. It creates a weird, sick desire to put celebrities on pedestals where we resent them and then gloat over their fall. It's just icky. Not good for either the celebrity or the fan. I love music, art, literature, film, etc., but I wish we could just enjoy the work and the talent without swallowing the poison.
Herewith a comment posted to an article, "Bonkers in Alaska" by Beth Quinn, published at the CommonDreams site [link@sig]. The article got me going-- but as my unflattering reference below illustrates, Salon primed the pump.
I think it's sufficiently "on topic". I'm unloading it here both because I've been simmering over this issue for a good while, and because it's an ironic counterpoint to Kamiya's conclusion that "...it's positively frightening that we have to keep watching Palin."
With all due respect, it may be true enough that They Started
It by catapulting Palin into national recognition. But in my view,
the circumstances under which Palin was thrust upon us is only the
beginning of the story, and its least remarkable aspect.
___________________________________________
I must be the only Amerikan who finds the grotesque, obsessive stoning of Sarah Palin to be far more significant than Palin herself.
When the Republican Party pulled her out from under her Alaskan rock, I thought of Katherine Harris-- another ditsy, ambitious Republican wingnut serving the reactionary cause.
Still, over the campaign period, and even into the present, I was shocked by the absolute brutal animosity that arose in the Democratic ranks.
To this day, as this trifling article [i.e., Quinn's] demonstrates, the compulsion to mock and deride the woman persists at a level that can't be fully explained by the conviction that she's an incompetent dingbat without redeeming qualities.
Please note that I don't particularly dispute this opinion. I just don't think it's as important as the anaphylactic shock she induces in her detractors.
My 2¢ pop-psychology opinion is that at least some of this unremitting animus and rancor originated with the PUMAs and less obstreperous Hillary supporters. It was as if the Republicans choosing an obscure woman as Veep was considered the dirtiest of tricks-- an attempt to steal the identity-politics game that Democrats had owned for decades.
It was as if Hillary, like Glinda the Good Witch, was supposed to be the first woman president (or vice-president)! And when that prospect went by the board, those loathsome Goopers added insult to injury by summoning the Moronic Witch of the Northwest to usurp Hillary and the Democratic Party's Place in History!
For instance, the mushy moderate liberal Joan Walsh, editor of Salon.com, to this day pounces on every possible twist and turn of Palin's peculiar life to mock and deride her. Strictly speaking, I don't know that Walsh herself oversees this almost daily scourge. But Google for yourself to see the avalanche of Palin-sneering and criticism published there.
Last summer, I mentioned to an Obama-supporter of my acquaintance that I was horrified by the anti-Palin overkill arising from both political opponents and the moderate-liberal blogosphere. He retorted heatedly that it certainly was contemptible and outrageous that the Republicans would resort to picking a provincial nitwit as a "Hail Mary" strategy to gain political traction. What was wrong with me?
This Obama supporter, otherwise intelligent and perceptive, treated my observation as if I were "supporting" or commending Palin. I tried to explain that even if Palin is pathetic and unfit for high office, the hostility and rancor was many orders of magnitude greater than that elicited by other trashy opportunists. I maintained, and still maintain, that the anti-Palin hostility was, and remains, far deeper and more insidious than mere resentment at her unfitness for high(er) political office.
Finally (at long last!): while I don't endorse obnoxious cretins as model candidates, consider all of the Serious, Experienced, Impeccably Credentialed, and Highly Qualified Misrepresentatives we keep electing on every level.
Don't they, by and large, turn out to govern as plutocrats, dictators, and war criminals? I'm in no way "pro"-Palin, but the Fine and Upstanding "bona fide" players with sparkling curriculum vitae are as bad in their own way-- or worse.
An excellent analysis. One thing that (selfishly) especially saddens me about the death of Jackson is that there are so few individuals around endowed with truly breathtaking creative genius. The Jacksons of this world enrich our lives in ways that no amount of money ever could. The bell tolls for us all when they pass.
Palin. In a way I feel sorry for her. I wonder at what point she realised that she couldn’t carry the charade on any longer. Her high school looks and high school debating oratory was all she had. Maybe something happened to make her aware that she was ultimately nothing more than a small cog in the machinations of Bill Kristol and his thugs.
I wasn't mourning so much Michael the personality passing away, but the end of an era that he came to symbolize. Michael represented an innocence that no other artist of his stature could capture. His videos were clean, his music caring, worldly, sensitive and beautiful (in the latter years, they kinda became raunchy but never reached the level of raunchiness and profanity you see in todays videos). Other artists like Madonna were already experimenting with sexuality in their videos, while Michael showed that talent and hard work and passion meant everything. Thats why even people who didnt know him mourned his passing away, because while people sneered at his childlike innocence projected in his music, the fact of the matter remains that he truly meant and adopted it, and made people like myself hope that that innocence would remain.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
