InstaPun***K.Com

Monday, February 08, 2010

Un-Manning Us

Who's being arrested here? Men.
Do I want an Audi Castrati? No.

FAR FROM THE MANNING CROWD. I hate to do this because I hate to come off as some humorless and paranoid old curmudgeon who sees sinister agendas in even the most light-hearted expressions of popular culture. But I guess that's what I'm becoming. All I'll say in my defense is that this isn't about resentment at the Colts' loss. There were two P*ytons at the game yesterday. The one who put in an MVP performance was Sean Payton, Coach of the Saints. He won by being bold, surprising, fearless, indomitable, and brilliant. Manhood personified. My only hope is that the Saints win isn't somehow transmogrified into a, well, canonization of the entire city of New Orleans and absolution for the whining, gimme-gimme air of victimhood it has bleated to the world since suffering the sad but predictable fate of a major metropolitan area which insists on settling hundreds of thousands of people below sea-level with no plan for disaster response and recovery except blaming the president.

All these years later and the only milestone of New Orleans resilience is a sports victory by a band of fifty millionaires who would also like us to know that we haven't done nearly enough to make things easier in the Big Easy for all the folks who've never been able to afford the price of a ticket to Saints home games?! Right. I'm moved. To throw up.

Which brings me to the much ballyhooed Super Bowl commercials. Are they significant? Yes. Why? Because they're a snapshot of the 'official' pop culture of the day, an archetypal slice of the themes and memes the with-it people whose business it is to sell things think we'll buy based on their assessment of who we are and how we see ourselves. The slice is also self-consciously forward-looking. That is, it's intended to help us ordinary schmoes stay in the mainstream consumerist flow by letting us know what trends we need to keep abreast of if we're going to be "cool" in the future. In short, Super Bowl ads are seeking to be visionary and educational as well as familiar and funny. They're telling us who to be in the coming year, whoever we might be now.

So I watched the ads with interest and increasing dismay. The one people talked about most in advance was the one that was politically incorrect -- Tim Tebow and his mom telling us that he could easily have been aborted. How awful. Really really pernicious to remind everyone in the TV audience that if their moms weren't at least something like Tim Tebow's, they wouldn't be watching the damn 2010 Super Bowl. Almost an act of terrorism when you think about it. Because it's dark indeed to consider for a moment the kids who aren't watching the 2010 Super Bowl because their moms made a "choice" that prevented them from being anywhere. Gruesome, dude. Who wants to think that his or her own mom could be a legally immune member of the Super Bowl audience, dipping chips and swilling beers while you could be, uh, not a member of the Super Bowl audience, with no one the wiser? (Found it interesting indeed that CBS Sports featured silly rather than provocative ads in its rundown of the of most view-worthy.)

All that said, the Tebow ad didn't have much an effect on me. I hear he's not even going to be a first-round draft choice. Some pundits are saying his highest NFL career aspiration should be backup quarterback with some second-tier team. Jeez. Why should I care? The Eagles have Michael Vick as a backup already. Excuse me?

I was considerably more interested by the "themes and memes" of the rest of the Super Bowl ads. I seem to have missed the pop culture moment when it became common knowledge that all grown men are either pussy-whipped husbands or various shades of gay, barring the ones who are such pure cartoons they never experience a moment of consciousness even a dog can't outwit.

I had no idea, for example, that it had been so universally conceded men no longer wear the pants in the family:

As if a pair of khakis could rectify such a problem.

Didn't know that owning a car you enjoyed driving came at such a soul-destroying price:

Funny, eh? Espcially when Dexter does the voiceover.

And I was stunned that a straight-arrow like Jim Nantz would offer up such a feeble workaround for the plight of the "New American Man."

Yes, I know. It's just droll. Even the most supine of us would
never consent to walk around with her bra on our shoulder.

I mean, what's really the joke in these ads? That we've seen such poor fellows amongst our manlier groups? Or that we are such poor fellows ourselves? The answer lies in the products. Are they expecting us manly men to talk our pals into buying a Charger or a portable TV, or are we being told that a pair of Docker khakis might make us look manlier than we know we are? Figure it out, dimwits. Bearing in mind that the average labrador retriever can now outsmart us on the fly:

And why would a dog get so mad at US? Disappointment?
Whose idea was that shock collar? Where is she right now?

And worse, much worse, is the new trend in banned Super Bowl ads. Weren't they always supposed to be for us guys, the ones who followed the NFL so closely that we knew how to search YouTube for the licentious GoDaddy payoffs?

But what's going on with the banned ads this year? Gay. And more gay. Even from GoDaddy:

Danica owes us an apology. Oh yes she does.

And the whole advertising community that ever thought of, wrote, or produced an NFL ad owes us an apology for this:

Banned. But who's the intended audience?

You see, I'm starting to think the new meme is that being NFL fans makes us gay. Or dumber than rocks. I mean, does this make you feel better about anything?

Do they focus on the window idea? No. But where I
come from, the Bud Light would take a poor second
to spying the girl in the shower. Go ahead. Arrest me.

Speaking of Budweiser, what did they have in mind with this? Brokeback Mountain livestock? "Can't quit you, Hoss"?

Charitably, we're talking bromance, not gay... yeah.

Hardly a highlight of the Clydesdale series, though. Especially considering the best ever such ad:

Does one tear make you gay? Today, probably.

I know some of you will offer what you think are rebuttals. An NCIS ad that featured headslaps (but girl-girl headslaps are a cool by-poduct?) Gillette ads about man-stink that should make us all feel manlier (if the ads weren't for 'bodywash').

Seems to me that a trend which is effectively predicted far in advance counters rebuttal attempts. I'll close with an extremely curious video, published on YouTube back in July, which seems to purport to anticipate all the Super Bowl ads we've been looking at.

See any women? See any men?

Precisely. What they didn't predict was the Audi ad up top. The keystone ad of the entire Super Bowl. Highlighting the danger of opposing the feminizing turn toward government as insane mother and shrewish wife. This year it was just a warning. In future years it will be a series of public service edicts. And for once, the City of New Orleans will be a pacesetter, crouching and supplicating before the beneficent hand of the government Medusa who gives life (uh, $) -- but will take it away in an instant if we don't read ourselves the right bedtime story.

Almost done now. The curmudgeon shift nearly over. But I'll offer a parting shot or three.

The Super Bowl is ridiculous as a football game. I don't think Johnny Unitas would have agreed to the current format. It's not a sporting event any longer when every sneeze by an official leads to a Super Bowl ad (or five). Team timeouts are actual anomalies in the ocean of timeouts that represent a Super Bowl telecast. I'm not saying this changes the course of the game. Only that it's no longer a game but a whorish carnival, something like Mardi Gras with its promise of beads for bare breasts. If you fancy yourselves NFL fans, devoted to seeing your own home teams get to and win a Super Bowl game, maybe you should start fighting, like me, for the game to be something other than two halves of a wreath encircling the appearance of yet another geriatric rock and roll band. Maybe you should DEMAND it be a game again. Old-fashioned and prudish, I know. But I continue to delude myself that men aren't just superannuated adolescents who would do anything for a glimpse of tits and pussy. Yeah, sorry. I forgot the beer.

I know you're more than that. Do you? Or have they convinced you to forget it in your obedient self-hatred as chattels of domineering women? Guess so. They've returned you to your roots -- locker room voyeurs always in danger of getting caught by mom, your wife, the latest castrating female authority figure in your sorry life. How about those Saints? Need some Cialis and a quick death by four-hour artificial erection? Sad, sad, sad.

The assault on men is extremely advanced. Do you care? Specifically, MEN, do you care? Hell. I don't if you don't. I remember when football was a game.

The Audi ad. Remember the groundbreaking "1984" ad by Apple? That was an exploitation of literary prophecy. The Audi ad is a promise that the prophecy is a REAL tidal wave about to break over our heads. The only thing that can stop it is men standing up. Is it really a coincidence that so much else in the Super Bowl ad tsunami was aimed at ridiculing manhood and assuming its surrender? Gay is not a parallel, comedic alternative. It's who they want and intend us to be. If not lusting for one another, borrowing one another's body wash and drinking beer while the women of various sexes crack the whip.

I could go on. If anyone wants to pick a fight, I will. I've only started this particular rant...

WHO ARE YOU? Laugh? Yeah, I laughed, with genuine good humor. Just maybe not in all the same places you did. I laughed at guys in their sixties being rock stars. Well, not at them exactly. At the eunuchs in the audience who have to get direction from their grandfathers about how, as men, to be the center of attention. Something We always were without thinking. Something that's become a lost and faintly funny art. Except when WE do it. The old, nasty ones. The ones who still know something everybody else has forgotten.

WHO ARE YOU 2. Sorry if I sound nasty and miserable. I'm pissed about a lot of things, most particularly about the fate of friendly commenter Jim Treacher. Run down by the government. Those of you who are fighters should fight about this. For his life and health. And for justice however you define it these days...

Friday, February 05, 2010

Hotair blinks, but grateful
for the mention...(simper)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Blogs Must Be Crazy

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

SMILE, SMILE, SMILE. You know. That Jon Stewart fellow is smart. He was on O'Reilly this week and he was, uh, smart, with high ratings:

A cute bit which I would have posted even if HA didn�t have a cameo. (Keep an eye out about a third of the way through.) His point about blogger sensationalism is fair � I nodded at it myself two days ago � but go figure that a medium driven by partisan warfare and fierce competition for traffic would favor eye-grabbing headlines rich with violent metaphors. The irony, of course, is that Stewart himself owes no small part of his popularity among the left to his status as some sort of partisan gladiator who can be counted on to make conservative guests squirm.

Yuck. They make their livings from it now: traffic. Over-promote but under-offend and make nice behind the scenes because we're all in the same goddam bidness. Anything else anyone needs to know about the big-time blogosphere?

The "Corpseman" Thing

Yeah. He really said it. Three times.

DESPAIR. AllahPundit covered it. But not critically enough for Ed Morrissey, who said this:

I know Allahpundit hit this one last night, but no set of Obamateurisms would be complete without including the Navy �corpsemen� remarks from Barack Obama. Besides, I disagree with my esteemed blog partner on this one. Had Obama said this just one time and corrected it afterward in his remarks, then I�d have bet that some helpful staffer had loaded the Teleprompter with an incorrect phonetic spelling. However, after the first time �corpsemen� came out of his mouth, any speaker with even a passing knowledge of the military would have realized that the word had been mispronounced. After the second one, it should have been obvious...

Next time, maybe a White House staffer should make sure that all of the hard words really are spelled phonetically � or maybe our Commander in Chief should familiarize himself with the nation�s military instead.

I think they're both giving the One a wholly undeserved pass.

This is outrageously embarrassing. To the President. His handlers. And to the entire nation. I'm sorry but there is absolutely, positively no excuse for this kind of "Obamateurism" on any level.

It's not just about ignorance of the military. It's about fundamental illiteracy -- illiteracy about the military, yes, but also basic historical and English language illiteracy. This is a ripping off of the mask of completely fake education. And stone blind stupid ignorance of institutions that lie at the very core (pun intended) of American experience. This is no staffer error, no teleprompter screwup. For a man who would steer us in the direction of superiorly enlightened European socialism, he can't possibly be this ignorant of the fact that his native language contains entirely assimilated French words like 'corps.' He's perfectly capable of referring to the Marine Corps without turning it into a cadaver. What does this mean? The man can't SPELL. What is it in his highly educated head? The United States Marine Core? Trivial lapse, you say? No. He's the President of the United States of America, not a gas station attendant struggling to limn a "No Shurt, No Shose, No Servise" sign. They made fun of George W. Bush for his malaprops. But his ingenuity with prefixes and suffixes never made anyone suspect he would commend the White House chef on the deliciousness of the 'horse doovers' at the latest state dinner.

And it's even worse than that. Much worse. Navy corpsmen and the U.S. Marine Corps aren't the only corps a president should have engraved not just on his teleprompter but his heart. There is, for example, one of the greatest speeches (as opposed to banal telescripts) ever delivered by a genuine American hero. You can read the full text here, but I urge you to listen to the deeply moving conclusion of a career far more brilliant than anything Obama has yet shown potential to equal.

By all means listen to the whole thing, but focus at 2:20 in to the end.

So. You're the President of the United States. The Commander-in-Chief. And you've never read or heard, or bothered to learn anything about, this remarkable reflection on the mission and meaning of the greatest military in the world, by the single greatest military genius this country has ever produced, because you're an utterly phony pseudo-intellectual illiterate whose idea of leadership is bowing down to all the enemies your predecessors have fought so hard to protect us from.

I don't know how else to say it. Our president is a nightmare of this order:

Allah and Ed, sometimes your even-handedness is pure dimness. WAKE UP. This wasn't a slip of the tongue. He heard himself say it. Twice. And nothing in his illustrious elite background tweaked his ear enough to prevent him from saying it a third time. He didn't know. This is a revelation. And you should be reeling in fear and dismay at what it tells us about the fool we've thrust into the Oval Office.

Damn, Damn, Damn. Bad enough that he didn't know how seriously he screwed the pooch. Worse that neither of you two do.

You should be as ashamed of yourselves as you are of the teleprompter staffer you prefer to blame.

Damn. Now you're embarrassing us.

UPDATE. Excellent point from Guy T:

I'd have thought he'd at least be acquainted with the Peace Corps or the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Frankly, I'd forgotten about them because they're so, well, forgettable. But it slams us back to the basic charge of pure illiteracy, doesn't it?

Which reminds me of an embarrassingly personal point of snobbery. (Forgive me, everyone. I'm human too, meaning vain and awful for typically superficial reasons...) When I was at Harvard, it was commonly understood that Havard meant Harvard College, not all the add-on and extension latecomers like the Law School and the Business School and the (ugh) Government School. We might have been arrogant twits, but we at least knew how to read and pronounce English words. Understand: this is me absolutely squealing in pain that any Harvard alum could pronounce the word "corpseman" without immediately withdrawing into a walnut-panelled common room to do his duty with a Ruger pistol. Just saying.

Wish I hadn't said that. Overlook it. Please. But it's been weighing on me for quite a while now. Maybe you know how that is.

Friday Follies?

For some reason, it's Music Day
in ConservativeLand. Go figure.

BigHollywood is featuring this ode to King George.

SERENDICITY? Who knows? Maybe hearts are just bursting with song because otherwise they'd be bursting with spleen. Still, it's funny. Here's a music video just posted at PajamasTV: It's called "You Talk Too Much" and it's about guess who.

And here's a hat tip from NRO about the likelihood we'll hear a conservative anthem at the Super Bowl.

The Who will probably play the all-time greatest conservative rock song, �Won�t Get Fooled Again,� during the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday.

That�s the #1 song on the list I compiled for National Review a few years ago. It�s the most talked-about article I�ve ever written...

A few months later, The Who were touring the United States. A writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer asked Townshend about the list.

This summer, National Review magazine called �Won�t Get Fooled Again� the greatest conservative rock song of all time. Townshend says that�s �on the money.� The self-described �working musician� who sees his job as �helping the audience to forget themselves,� says he never really bought into �all that hippie (expletive) I so despise.�

And, Townshend says, �when people say �Won�t Get Fooled Again� is not about rebellion, it�s the exact opposite of that, I say they�re right.�

Which also highlights the list (from 2006) I frankly missed:

On first glance, rock �n� roll music isn�t very conservative. It doesn�t fare much better on second or third glance (or listen), either. Neil Young has a new song called �Let�s Impeach the President.� Last year, the Rolling Stones made news with �Sweet Neo Con,� another anti-Bush ditty. For conservatives who enjoy rock, it isn�t hard to agree with the opinion Johnny Cash expressed in �The One on the Right Is on the Left�: �Don�t go mixin� politics with the folk songs of our land / Just work on harmony and diction / Play your banjo well / And if you have political convictions, keep them to yourself.� In other words: Shut up and sing.

But some rock songs really are conservative � and there are more of them than you might think. Last year, I asked readers of National Review Online to nominate conservative rock songs. Hundreds of suggestions poured in. I�ve sifted through them all, downloaded scores of mp3s, and puzzled over a lot of lyrics. What follows is a list of the 50 greatest conservative rock songs of all time, as determined by me and a few others. The result is of course arbitrary...

Go ahead. Peruse the entries. A lot of good songs there, some you know and some you probably don't. I'll play just one, and surprisingly perhaps, not the one (or two) you'd expect from an old Stones lunatic like me. I'm going with pure punk: Rock the Casbah by the Clash.

Banned from air play during Desert Storm

Okay, this is too much fun. One more: Bodies by the Sex Pistols.

The 'bodies'? Aborted babies.

Anyhow, I'm bowing to the universe's messages today and maybe you should too. Do you have any favorite songs that articulate your own political and cultural beliefs? Let us know and, if possible, give us links.

And, by all means, rock on.

P.S. Mrs. CP wanted me to devote the Friday Follies to today's 18th annual Wing Bowl, Philadelphia's answer to Fellini's Satyricon and the Eagles 0-for-Forever performance in Super Bowls. As instructed, I listened to much of the live radio broadcast (TV is utterly out of the question) from the Wachovia Center, where 19,000 drunken ticket holders assembled at 5 am to (drink and) watch an indoor parade of floats dissing Donovan McNabb and others, (drink and) watch a beauty contest of bikini clad Wingettes whose tops underwent a series of mysterious wardrobe malfunctions, and (drink and) watch a score or so of local "eaters" compete to see who could devour the most chicken wings in 28 minutes, divided of course into two 14-minute halves. The play-by-play announcers were WIP SportsTalk hosts, and the color announcer was a former porn starlet who commented in pitiless detail about "meat" and the, well, color of the five disqualifying vomit episodes that were also simultaneously replayed in slow motion on the Wachovia Center jumbotrons. Highlights included guest appearances by Snooki of Jersey Shore and Joey Chestnut, reigning Nathan's hot-dog-eating champion, who was so drunk he actually got ejected from the building at one point, though he returned in time to congratulate the winner and almost fall on the poor guy and his bloated bellyful of chicken flesh. The after party will last all day at Philadelphia's most famous strip club.

The long and the short of it is that I couldn't do what Mrs. CP asked. But I'm giving her this postscript instead. The winner downed an astonishing 238 chicken wings. Full coverage, photos, and video (!) are available at the WIP website. Here. (Also covered, oddly, by the elite liberal cognoscenti of the Huffington Post.)

Sorry, honey. Best I could do. I mean, does the whole world really need to know that the reason Eagles fans laugh at the Cleveland Browns' "Dog Pound" is because their own version of it can (and does) fill entire stadiums? No. They don't need to know that. Which is why I'm not going to tell them.

I'm asking people to share good conservative music instead. Like from the Clash and the Sex Pistols. So there.

I'm feeling incredibly virtuous about now. So don't go getting all distracted by Wingettes, okay? Music!

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Vertigo Followup
for Eduardo

The Vertigo vortex image. In her hair.

OLD BUSINESS. We had this deal. Eduardo would watch Vertigo, and I'd watch Babylon 5. What a sucker I was. Two hours versus dozens. Oh well. I keep my word. He kindly wrote back that he had watched Vertigo and understood that it was better than he'd thought, though he had some questions. Like, why did she jump at the end? What was that all about? Which caused me to write him again. Only he never got my email. And still, two email addresses later, hasn't gotten it. So here's what I wrote him.

Hi [Eduardo],

I was good too. I watched the first disc (four episodes) of Babylon 5. Note that you're done and I'm still under sentence. But a deal is a deal. It may take a while, but with my wife's persistence, I will keep going.

Too early to give you a review. I like some of it, but I'm waiting to see where it goes, reserving judgment. Okay?

As for your questions about Vertigo, let me first say that I appreciate your giving it a real look. I know how hard it can be. I got my first clue about that when you said you could only watch Rear Window by fast-forwarding through it. It brought to mind a close friend of mine (older than you and also smart as a whip) who jeered at Shane without knowing it was one of my favorite movies. Too slow. Nothing happens. Like watching paint dry. He'd been raised on Clint Eastwood westerns, which I also love, and waiting an entire movie for one gunfight was just unthinkable. I know how he felt. But I saw Shane BEFORE I saw Clint's remake, Pale Rider, and I love them both, though I know when I'm being honest with myself that Shane is the better movie by far, though slower, more 'composed' and hence more structurally artificial, though more dramatically, realistically, and humanly honest. [The solution to generational disconnect of this sort btw is to slow down. No, it's not Transformers, the Sequel. Sloooow Doooown. Listen to the Moonlight Sonata first. Satie. Nina Simone. Read T.S. Eliot out loud to yourself. It can be done.]

Hitchcock is also structurally artificial. He was famous for having every shot of a movie mapped out before he ever yelled action. He referred (glibly) to actors as cattle, though he always picked the ones (Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart) who could attend to the tiniest details on camera. He was the the cinematic equivalent of what in painting is called super-realism, hyper-realism, or photo-realism.

Like this.

His cinematography achieves an extraordinary FOCUS, either black-and-white or bursting color, that does not bleed, blur, stain, or otherwise interpose some filtering vision between filmmaker and observer. The dull sections of Rear Window you fast-forwarded through were Hitchcock's self-revelation of himself as a director. He is watching the intimate details most people fail to look at, because we all always confess our natures even if we never explain them in words. That's his signature. Always watching. Always a voyeur. And always third-person behind the camera. Incredibly difficult.

For example, I don't know if you've read the detective fiction of Dashiell Hammett. He was the precursor of all the greats, including the greatest, Raymond Chandler. But what is distinctive about Hammett from every other twentieth century writer I've ever read is that Hammett wrote in a pure third-person point of view. Not third-person ominiscient, or third-person limited omniscient -- not telling or intimating even his main character's thoughts. He wrote like a news reporter, depicting the physical appearances and actions only. I can tell you, as a fiction writer, this is an almost impossible narrative voice, even in the visual medium of film, where there are so many subtle ways to cheat. No other film director I know of tries it at all. Hitchcock does it exclusively.

He, and you, are always just watching, from some distance. That's where all his suspense comes from. None of his characters ever directly tells you, the audience, what they're thinking or planning. They tell other characters, perhaps, but they may be, and frequently are, lying.

Which is hyper-realism. You get to see everything in excruciating detail, but the director never saunters in to explain it all, just so you'll both be on the same page. Life isn't like that. Hitchcock isn't like that. Revelations always come in the form of action, outcomes, events.

Which is why Hitchcock movies require incredibly close and minute observation.

Which is especially true of Vertigo, considered by many of us to be Hitchcock's greatest picture. It was as close as he ever came to formal confession. What Stewart did with Novak in Vertigo, Hitchcock did with many of his (always blonde and beautiful) leading ladies. He made them all into his fantasy love object, dressing them, schooling them, directing them, transforming them. Grace Kelly. Tippi Hedren. Eva Marie Saint. Kim Novak. Others. They were just clay for his remote voyeuristic vision.

He knew that the exercise of such cold power was possibly evil, destructive, and most of all obsessive. At the end of Vertigo, Kim Novak didn't JUMP. She fell, frightened by a sudden apparition -- of a nun -- that is supposed to be a figure of safe and comforting authority, even divine authority. So who is the man who relentlessly drives her to this hysterical reaction? The man who begins the movie hanging by his fingernails from a rooftop? A man afraid of the heights his job pushed him to. A detective. In other words, a man whose whole profession is supposed to make him proof against being manipulated into a devious plot whose sole purpose is to destroy innocence. A man well loved and enfolded in superficial understanding who cannot stop himself from becoming the victim of his own fears and obsessions and creating other victims thereby.

The whole conducted in the most reasonable, understated, and third-person objective way imaginable.

Vertigo is an anguished psychological horror film, but one devoid of the arterial spray today's generation expects. The moment I've previously called transfiguration is tantamount to the sexual release Hitchcock obtained by controlling and commanding the beautiful women he could never possess sexually in real life. And they all got away from him. And his own internal torture was eternal, equivalent to damnation. The guilty man on top of the tower, no longer afraid of height for its power to do him in, but profoundly stained by the damage that height could do to clueless, illusory innocents.

Or, if you watched the movie enough, you could come up with a whole other interpretation of what it might mean, because nobdoy anywhere in the film volunteers the slightest sliver of insight about what it might mean.

Hitchcock.

All I know is that having seen it a few times it stays with you. Haunts you like the haunts of Stewart's delusions. Her suit becomes eerie. Her French twist. Her platinum hair. Why? Because Hitchcock succeeds in his plot just like the malefactor you noted succeeds unavenged in his. They get away "Scot-free." How? They make you fall in love with the illusion too. You can't wait to get rid of Kim Novak's mousy hair, trashy wardrobe, and thick eyebrows in favor of the vision in platinum and gray. Hitchcock is telling us, you want it too, and his choice of music makes it all seem something like romance. Stewart's moment of transformative fulfillment is ours too. And H's.

That's the real definition of H. Horror.

Regards,
[IP]

You see? Engage us here and we will -- what's the word? -- 'dialogue' with you to your heart's content. Or at least ours.

UPDATE. Just for fun, on the subject of point of view.

Searching for
Tiger Woods

Genius is a gift that ennobles us all,
and the prices it exacts are, uh, fair.

STILL IN THE TOP TEN. Up till now, there's been an air of low comedy about the Tiger Woods scandal. Fessing up, we've participated in that. Belatedly, I'm realizing there are major issues here, which is often the way with major issues. They hide under surfaces that are banal and easy to fool ourselves about. It takes time for the substance to emerge as the fireworks die down and the grinding machine proceeds with its slow, annihilating mission. Now it's clear that the worms are coming out of the woodwork, piling on, helping to further the public reaction we're gradually being herded to. We're told that Tiger needs to confess to Oprah (that ghastly parasite on other people's pain). We're informed, drip by drip, of the corporate sponsors who are abandoning their former gold standard of celebrity selling power. We're alerted to the fact that elder statesmen of golf like Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus are loosing tongues long held in check (apparently) to censure him for sins against decency and, worse, golf. We're treated to sinister and suspect photos of Tiger looking suddenly dark in a thuggish hoody as he begins "sex addiction rehab."

I'm calling bullshit on the whole game. The only smart thing that's been said by anyone was Rush Limbaugh's observation that people are angry at Tiger for the crime of not being happy. The man who has everything -- fame, endless riches, and a picturebook family -- is not permitted to disappoint us by revealing that even everything can be not enough. This is true, as far as it goes, but it's not nearly sufficient to explain the importance and significance of the current media feeding frenzy and the truth that may lie deep inside the world of Tiger Woods.

Or, for that matter, the truth that may lie deep inside the world of Barack Obama. (I'll get back to this. I promise.)

Tiger Woods is the product of a process well known to us, one which we have frequently condemned even as we celebrated what it produced. His comrades in arms? Michael Jackson. Mike Tyson. Mickey Mantle. Venus and Serena Williams. Amelia Earhardt. Judy Garland. Macauly Culkin. And Bobby Jones. In each case, you have a parent or spouse who pushes an obvious talent toward greatness, often at tremendous cost to the person whose life is being directed by a dominant other. The ambition behind the pushing isn't necessarily malevolent. But it can be incredibly destructive and sometimes fatal.

Several things about this phenomenon are interesting to me. First, hasn't it been about a year since we were all poselytized to forgive Michael Vick, to accept his crimes as 'mistakes' and give him a 'second chance'? Are Tiger's sins really worse than Michael Vick's? Yes, he blew out his marriage, but he committed no atrocities against man or beast. Is there a double standard at work here? Perhaps a racial double standard? We're supposed to understand that Michael Vick never learned that it was evil to torture and murder dogs because of the impoverished state he grew up in. Meaning, we're supposed to understand that not forgiving Michael Vick his 'mistakes' is tantamount to racism.

Which would be ironic indeed, because I think there's also a racial component to the fix Tiger is in now. Consider this. Every sports fan has learned that the sorry ending to Mickey Mantle's life was the result of the fact that his father mercilessly drove him from earliest childhood to become the greatest player in baseball. Which he, in fact, became. We still love Mickey Mantle but we cluck at the abuse the old man dished out to create our icon.

Contrast this with the treatment Tiger Woods's father has received from the media: he was a good man, a military man, who guided and instructed his son on his path toward golfing greatness. uh, in other words, he was Mickey Mantle's father. A man with a suspect agenda.

Mickey Mantle's father but black. And so immune from publicly voiced suspicion. Except that by popular media treatment and his own protestations, Tiger isn't black. (What is he? 'Blasian.' Oh.) Or else we might now be looking at him as we do Michael Jackson, the victim of an abusive childhood which made him into a freak, defenseless against the forces that transformed talent into narcissism on a suicidal scale. And, for that matter, has the sporting press ever really pursued the question of what occurred in the Williams household to make Venus and Serena into tennis champions? Even when there is the occasional spectacular ugliness we saw from Serena last year? No.

To be clear, I'm not saying that the syndrome Tiger has fallen prey to is a function of his race. Only that he, oddly, is a double victim of political correctness. He gets punished going and coming because of what we agree to talk about and what we agree not to talk about. Truth is, prodigies of every sort have been subject to the same ills throughout recorded history, beginning perhaps with Alexander the Great. The process of grooming a promising child for breakthrough greatness is moral quicksand. Terrible things can be done. Especially when the one who pushes is doing it not for the sake of the pushee but for his or her own selfish motives. To live vicariously through a child or spouse, to achieve a sort of vengeance on the world for everything the pusher is not and can never be. (Worst example: 'Toddlers and Tiaras.')

But that's not the whole story, particularly when fathers are involved. Unlike mothers, fathers have a responsibility to the culture into which they thrust their children. They are there to protect, certainly, but not just the child. They are also there to make sure their blood does its best service to the tradition of which they are a part. It is uniquely their responsibility, unlike mothers, to make sure that their sons and daughters do no harm and, wherever possible, participate in setting the bar of excellence higher for everyone else. In other words, there's a case to be made in defense of Mickey Mantle's father. What's that case? He gave us Mickey Mantle.

It's all well and good that Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus now choose to criticize Tiger Woods. I understand. I do not criticize them for criticizing. But the world needs geniuses, with all their dramas and flaws. The difference between Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods is illustrative. Nicklaus was as great a golfer as it's possible to be without actually being great. He never understood the drama of his records or greatest victories. Golf was never a force that flowed through him and erupted in spontaneous specific gravity. He dominated but always as a drab. Tiger is a force of nature. Like Bobby Jones before him.

Key moment. 48 seconds in. Nicklaus is
mad at Tiger for having a temper. Do tell.

Just two more points to make. Since when did 'forgiveness' become an external institutional sacrament of popular culture? The forgiveness of Tiger Woods is not a function of Oprah or TMZ or polls. It's a private matter between Tiger Woods, his family, and his own conscience. It may well be that being Tiger Woods is worth the price he is paying right now. Personally, I fear that he may be suicidal because he has allowed himself to be so packaged, sponsored, and promoted that there's nothing left of him. As far as I know, I'm the only one who's concerned about this. Does that tell you anything? My hope is that he remembers he was raised to be not the greatest husband or father in the world but the greatest golfer. Which he is. Even if he quits it all today. That's a worthwhile basis for embarking on a new life, one that provides more return for the effort expended. I sincerely wish him peace of mind and, eventually, happiness, based on the forgiveness only he can accord himself, with whatever repentance he may find necessary. Note that none of this has anything to do with what we, the public, can bring to the table. Or even Jack Nicklaus.

Finally. My fears for Tiger are analogous to my fears for Obama. Both were raised as special projectiles against the disappointments of an obsessive parent. They differ only in that Tiger possesses real genius. Obama is presently experiencing his own first acquaintance with reality outside the bubble of a missionary upbringing. (I do know something of this kind of upbringing, kiddies.) We may be on the brink of watching him shatter into a thousand pieces. Not all putative geniuses are.

But Tiger is. Which is why I'll close with this clip.

Have I given you anything to think about? Doubt it. We're all used to setting the price on the value we obtain from strangers. A big part of that price is our right to stand in judgment over the corpse of our inspirations. So be it.

P.S. uh, the whole 'sexual addiction' wheeze. Anybody else out there who thinks this is a bridge too far? Must we have 12-step programs for everything? Is every excess we indulge in a nail that has to be crushed by a 12-step hammer? I have to admit that, for me, sex isn't the same thing as alcohol or drug addiction. Sex is actually fun, exciting, and curiously lacking in hangover symptoms. It doesn't rot your liver, loosen your front teeth, kill strangers on the highway, or suddenly stop your heart. Not that it can't do damage to people you're supposed to protect. But it's not exactly an addiction, is it? Worst case, contextually but never absolutely, it's -- what's the word -- a sin. Turning it into something else is the ultimate hypocrisy of our age. And a sure sign that our attempts to 'cure' people of it as if it were a disease are doomed to failure. Most particularly when we posit the mass audience of pop culture voyeurs as the judges of the cure. Infidelity is not a disease. or an addiction. It's a failure of character. There's no 12-step program for that. There's only confession, apology, repentance, atonement, and the love that allows for redemption. Most women aren't capable of it. Some are, though. When they are, we call it Christianity, not rehab.

Just how loud do I have to scream to make you realize how sick our national life has become?

Favorite Entries

Navigation

Search Instapunk:

Email:

Just for You

Link to InstapunditK

Recommended

Monday, February 08, 2010

Friday, February 05, 2010

Thursday, February 04, 2010