These three words can describe my evening. Last night as I was about to leave the office for Chisel – I work in the hinder lands of Virginia, at 5 pm, a little problem arouse its ugly head, and being the anal retentive gay, I stayed to solve it. At first I thought it would be only 30 minutes or so, but that turned into a 2 hour effort, the good thing is I got a lot other stuff done. Yay! For work but bad for the figure. Once the crisis was solved, I drove to the gym and did some cardio while doing cardio; I was on the step machine to be exact I wasted 1 hour of my time by watching and listening to American Idol. I have to say this it was the first time I had ever watched said show, and I have a confession, I can see why people like it. I saw the “good” episode, where the no talents audition to go to
The funny thing is that last week two of my co-workers, of conservative persuasion, were talking about Idol and said that it was the liberal’s fault that no one told people anymore that they are not good at something. I had no good retort to this, and said that it was not the fault of the liberal’s but just the fault of modern western world, that sees the chance of being famous as the only way out of poverty. After watching the show, I realized that this people that know they are bad singers, just go there to exhibit themselves. Some of them are delusional, I give you that, and most of them are told by their friends they are good, but how in his or her right mind just listens to ones friends. That is not part of the liberal bias that is part of the human bias. We will tell people we like that we like what they do, because they are our friends or family. I would like to think I am a liberal that does not delude himself about his talents, but I do keep a blog – and know I am no Phillip Roth. I will never aspire to be a singer or an actor, but maybe that is just because I am so overeducated that I have other incredible aspirations that will never come to bare fruit. This has nothing to do with political ideals. This all goes to show how a better educated group of people tend to look for opportunities elsewhere and the people with no other chances, with no aspiration or role models, see show business as the one way out. Are we all at some level part of the American Idol phenomena, trying to be something we are not good at?
Maybe the answer is yes.
PS. The snow refers to the craziness that ensues any winter precipitation in DC.
2 comments:
The conservatives are partly correct. Liberalism's 1960's base revolved around breaking free from unnecessarily restrictive societal judgments (i.e. the kind that so completely dominated 1950's America that "Catcher in the Rye," which to the modern reader seems innocuously bland, was seen as radcial and dangerous). At first, the liberals were so very correct: they demolished quantities of pointlessly punitive moral and societal "bright lines." This gave us a myriad of wondrous new freedoms (most notably sexual: hip-hip-hoorah!), but it had no obvious stopping point.
And so it kept going, at times throwing out the proverbial baby (judgment of basic standards of quality) with the bath water (prejudicial personal judgments). This new freedom from judgment became the orthodoxy, briefly, epitomized by the 1970's insane focus on the idea that a child's self-esteem would be destroyed if any quality standards were imposed.
The Reagan era represents the backlash against such relativism, which continues today. The conservatives, however, have discovered that every time they try to draw a bright line, they or someone close to them steps over the line and must be forgiven and/or accepted. So each individual conservative maintains the bright lines that no one close to him/her has violated, while finding exceptions for the rest. (For example, your colleagues apparently aren't bothered by your being a homo, because they know you. But if they didn't know any homos, odds are they'd maintain that moral bright line.) This is why they are regularly accused of hypocrisy.
Conservativism also focuses on one's duties to the immediate family unit/clan/tribe much moreso than liberalism, which focuses on one's duties to the larger Humanity.
So I think the idea that the conservatives would blame liberals for the appalling lack of self awareness displayed on American Idol is ridiculous. In the first place, they started it by setting absurdly rigid standards, against which any thinking person would rebel. They continued it by being unable to effectively set new (presumably reasonable) standards due to their own hypocrisies. And they enable it by their focus on closing ranks within the nuclear family.
i feel the same way as you do, re: sports. for example, the super bowl went on and on about how historic the superbowl was because there were two black coaches. but is that the best role model? so often, young blacks think that sports is the way, out of poverty. sports figures are rich! but, why not education? why not, "we've had two black secretaries of state"? that to me, seems important as role models go. of course, one was totally used by a facist regime, and the other, a careerist who would kill a starving baby if it helped her in her power mongering, but, thats a different discussion.
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