In a sane world, in a world not addicted to fame and Facebook and Twitter and Eight Is Waaay Too Much, and phony kids in phony balloons, in a world that had even a modicum of shame or manners or decorum, the twits who crashed the White House state dinner – the Salahi’s – would end up with paper bags over their heads, escorted to and booted out the Dreaded Door of Ignominy.
But not here in 21st Century America. Here, now, it’s all about ME! The Salahi’s are scheduled to be on Larry King, may even be picked for Bravo’s “Housewife” reality series, best described as a series about ME! ME! It’s All About ME! that is watched by people who have devalued their lives to the point that they spend time watching shows about other nobodies who somehow think they now have “value” because they’re on a TV show about nobodies deluded into thinking they’re somebodies since they’re on TV being watched by nobodies wishing they could be somebody like the nobodies on TV. It’s the perfect funhouse mirror of ultimate devaluation and emptiness.
Except, of course, for the money. The REAL value in American Society. The money, pots of which can be made from these faux-reality programs. Jackpot dough. And since the NY Times reports the Salahi’s wine business was in financial trouble it’s possible that one reason for their gate-crashing stunt was to get that Bravo contract and thereby get all that nice money to save their troubled business. That and the faux fame, of course--the photo of (non Indian) Ms. Salahi decked out in her red sari clutching President Obama’s hand in both of hers. Ah, the faux intimacy of it all! With said sari begging the question: Would Ms. Salahi have crashed a state dinner for the Dutch Ambassador wearing a dirndl skirt and wooden shoes while carrying a large gouda cheese?
Well, why not. No sense follows no shame and if it’s all about the money and the fleeting fame, anything goes. And rewarding bad behavior begets even more bad behavior.
But, Dear God, what the world really needs now isn’t more bad behavior, but more paper bags to pop over heads. And that will only happen when a sufficient number of grown ups are willing to say: Enough already.
I know. When pigs fly.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
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4 comments:
Heads will roll, (In this country that means that GSA classifications will not be upgraded expediently) and appropriately The Secret service detail shall experience a severe verbal wrist slapping.
What we have heyere, eyzz a fay-lyer of the Eer-margin-ashin.
Have you checked out the quality of the "Fictional TV-Hollywood conglomorate" recently? with every major feature film remade, every comic book character reanimated, every animated character fleshified. Havn't seen the remake of "birth of a Nation " in 3-D digital yet.
Wait for this to penetrate the political world; we'll have Actors running for Governor spots, even running for the leader of the free world Position. Soon therafter, the world will surely end.
Word verification: bobiting-
As in what Lorna did to her husband's part of the body you wouldn't want to have tossed in an empty lot. Didn't he get a tv run out of it?
Yup, TV contracts all 'round. Bad behavior rewarded by a fame/celebrity obsessed nation of ADD/ADH-afflicted children amusing themselves to death. Yup. Yup.
It's all so very hard on satirists. People without shame are self-satirizing. There's nothing left for us snarky comic writers to say.
As Lilly Tomlin (I think) once observed about satire: No matter how hard I try, I can't keep up.
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