October 2006 Cover
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The bread & circuses of our civic decline
By
Mitzel
I read with interest in one of the newspapers that a famous us "reality"
TV show was tweaking its format for the coming season (assuming the
TV grid still has "seasons"). This is the one where folks are stuck on an island
or another isolated place and have to work it out. Each week a participant is "voted off" the show. The whole concept, when it debuted, sounded to me like a speed-infused transactional analysis session run by a control
freak. Perhaps just like life. Anyway, the new season was to feature groups of people segregated by sex and race. An all-white troupe. An all-black group. An Asian group.
W
ho pitched this idea? The separate-but-equal crowd? As the TV schedule gets fragmented into many dozens of channels, it appears that each pitch must be to a finite market. Why not race, ethnicity, and sex? Why not
have a bunch of old-fashioned queans on an island?
Boys in the Band morphs into Boys in the
Sand. "I'm not eating a bug. I saw Richard Hatch eat a bug and he wound up in prison!" A part of life consists of episodes of
public humiliation-- Richard Nixon made it into a career-- but to seek these events out on a public medium boggles my mind (what's left of it). All I can think is: Moths To The Flame.
Voted off. Popular culture, many large swaths of it, will reflect the political culture of the time. I recall how shocked I was-- the minute after Ronni RayGun became President-- how quickly the airways were stuffed with
shows celebrating the lives of the privileged. Also the elevation of celebrity culture into The News Culture. No more Archie Bunker. No more Mary Hartman. No more Jeffersons. I remember when Michael Dukakis, Governor
of Massachusetts (the state where I live), was the nominee for the Democratic Party for President in 1988. He had a number of debates with another Bush, and in reference to what I presume was the Governor's take on
the degradation of both political and economic life in this country under RayGun, Dukakis quoted an old Greek adage (his father was born on Lesbos): "The fish rots from the head."
Alas, now the USA and the world must listen-- painfully, I must note-- to another Bush. In these years, we have seen the corporate scandals, outsourcing of jobs, the raid on pension funds, the assault on working people and
the middle class, the redistribution of national treasure to the richest of the rich, and on and on. Is it any wonder that popular culture has pushed to the fore shows in which citizens are humiliated and "voted off"? This is not a
model for citizenship. Must the Roman Coliseum in its heyday be our "role model"?
Voted off. I just read a blog wherein it was revealed that Karl Rove's father was a gay man. The gentleman was not K's biological father, but Rove grew up with him and always thought of him as Dad. This gentleman then
told Rove's mother that he was gay and wanted a divorce. They divorced. And Rove's father went off to live with a group of senior gay men in a community in California.
Rove is, of course, the chief political adviser to the current President of the United States. In 2004, he was instrumental in whipping up the right-wing religious in Ohio and other states on the issue of "gay marriage."
Passing constitutional amendments, working black churches, stirring of the hate pot. His colleague in this enterprise was Ken Mehlman, currently the Big Cheese at the Republican National Committee, about whom rumors swirl.
I have no interest in outing either Rove or Mehlman, as I don't care. But if Rove's father was a gay man, did Karl learn nothing from his years with him? If Mehlman is a gay man, what thoughts did he have while out on the
hustings attacking same-sex couples? We have seen this before-- ambition before integrity and, as Dorothy Parker noted to Clare Booth Luce, pearls before swine, or more correctly in this topsy-turvy world, swine before pearls.
What does Ken Mehlman think when he deposits his check from the RNC each week? (Ken likely has direct deposit.) Murray Chotiner (Nixon's Rove), Lee Atwater (Bush the First's Rove), Karl Rove-- the conservative party
has a machine to turn out these pit bulls. Their thoughts are not with the better angels; I suspect their "strategy sessions" are more along the line of the witches in
Macbeth. Stirring that cauldron. So far it's worked like a
charm. But payback is a motherfucker, as the children used to say in the 60s, and I think this crew is about due for some backwash up their toilet drain. I hate to mix metaphors but these days anything goes.
One more quisling
My favorite among this bunch was the fellow, who will remain nameless as I have already dropped too many names, who has long been a big-time fund-raiser for a bevy of GOPers both here in Massachusetts (where he lives)
and for national candidates, including, if memory serves, the late Jesse Helms (the Bush people haven't put Helms on a stamp yet, have they?). Some of his clients were frothing homophobes-- just the worst type. But the
minute same-sex nuptials became legal in MA, this fellow married his beau. And why shouldn't he? It's just, well, I don't know-- how can you get out of bed in the morning with your boyfriend, take that call from Jesse Helms (or
others), and strategize about your next fag-bashing campaign?
Money can buy most everything in the culture, but money can't buy it all. And before we all get into an orgy of voting people off, wouldn't it be swell to actually let all-and-every exercise the franchise, including the good
folks in Ohio, Florida, and other showcases of electoral virtue? If not, we'll all wind up with a Diet of Worms and get voted off. Where to?
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