There is a thin veneer which covers the face of everyone. It is easy for many to see the top, and miss the depths, but then it is also easy to fantasise depths into being. Like looking at a rock star and imagining their lifestyle as being much worse than it is.
Rocker Rod Stewart had raunchy lyrics in his music, but interviewers never failed to mention he was just a decent bloke.
Because of the difficulty in reading people, things get made up, or assumed. It pays well for a rock star to have a human face, and so many that don’t, pretend they do. This hypocrisy was made clear for me with the death of INXS star Michael Hutchence, when a coronial finding of suicide led to a collective sigh of relief that Hutchence wasn’t actually sexually dysfunctional from all the drugs he took.
Or when my best friend found a girlfriend .. and married her. Overnight he became clean cut, never having done, in his legend, those things he had done in his youth.
But we make mistakes in our youth. Things we don’t want other young people to copy. For the sake of a relationship, it is understandable that one might rewrite history. But what happens when our young grow up and make mistakes? Do we admit our faults? Do we close our eyes and hope that the young are as lucky as we were, and hope they don’t get wiped out before they too must compromise themselves for adulthood?
Recently, in Australia, a fringe comedy show had depicted events surrounding a schoolgirl who died from ecstasy at a party. The parallels with an actual case which occurred after filming but before broadcast led the producer to apologise.
It makes sense that a guitarist that learned guitar in their parent’s garage, practising through nights while on the effects of amphetamines might claim now that they weren’t a habitual drug user. It also makes sense that someone who once claimed that the Jewish Conspiracy could be seen from the works of Kissinger through to the Palestinian disputes, might now claim to never being anti-Semitic. But how do they respond when a young person asks if they did drugs, or if they believe the conspiracy surrounding 911?
Kids know when they are being lied to. It gets confusing when they are asked to decode the acts of OJ or Spector, but not Clinton or Gore.
Recently, in Australia, prominent left wing leader Keving Rudd asked the population to believe that after visiting a strip club in NY when on diplomatic duty he had been too drunk to recall what had happened. That’s right, the opposition leader can’t remember the last time he saw a pretty girl naked .. and his popularity increased in the polls. Maybe our children don’t know when they are being lied to.
2 comments:
I discovered something today, which follows on oddly from my previous entry.
As a society, we get upset when a football star confesses to have been a drug abuser for years. Or a pop star gets done for possession.
We say, "they should be a role model for our kids."
I've always felt it was too much to ask of an elite athlete to also be an elite moralist and bind him or herself. I'm never surprised to learn that in private, a sports star or a Hollywood star has an undesirable personality or has wild drug habits.
When I was young I was a Paul McCartney fan. When Paul was caught in Tokyo for Marijuana possession, I didn't think "yeah, marijuana, that's a pop star thing to do. I should do it."
In fact, I thought "what a moron."
For the record I've never had a drug habit. Never. And in most part it was easy to do it. Just say no, right?
Now, I can imagine some idiot taking up drugs because their favorite star or athlete did it, but I think it's too much to put the responisibility on the said star. I've never understood that impulse. After all, it's just one's choice to do drugs or not; not the stars. There's so much else to emulate from a star than their dumb drug habits.
In the same way, I've never been one to jump up and down about what a politician does in their private life. I'm just not a moralist because I figure the circumstances surrounding people's sex lives are always complex and hard to articulate. Who knows how or why Bill Clinton ended up in a compromising situation with Monica Lewinski, a lowly intern? Who knows how anybody gets tangled up in affairs?
Who is without the experience of the sort of complex entanglements of personal relationships? Who can draw neat lines around these things?
But today, I find one of the former Senators in my country was accused of raping young boys. I draw my line there. Really, if you're in legislature, you MUST be a role model and doing blatantly illegal things just won't/doesn't/shouldn't fly.
The former Senator committed suicide to avoid the trial (they think).
I find those who go around moralising about all this pretty distasteful. Believe me, there are those who want to spell out the obvious as if it's some kind of dicovery or conspiracy. Worse still they want to score political points over this - which is their prerogative, if a little hypocritical and idiotic.
So this is my discovery for the day:
It's not the morals, stupid, it's the law - and if you're in legislature ad you're breaking it, what kind of role model are you to all of society?
There are those who really should be considered role models and take their positions seriously. Turns out they're not pop stars and sports stars, they'e damned polticians.
Time to despair.
It's a bore, but it's true. Australia is headed toward an election and so politics is stepping to the forefront of people's thinking.
Now, if you're a cynic like me, you hum "Won't Get Fooled Again' and hope that the dirtiest rat-b@stard gets a bullet through the ballot, regardless of their ideological persuasion. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss and all that.
When it really comes down to it I'm actually deeply cynical about electoral politics in my country. I'm definitely non-aligned. And thus my vote is a swinging vote.
But why am I saying all this now?
You see, I was re-reading Herodotus a while back and came across the passage where Darius takes over the Persian Empire. His cohorts who help him overthrow the previous Emperor argue in turn their cases for a Democracy, and then an Oligarchy; but Darius forcefully argues a case for a Monarchy - and gets himself voted in as Emperor. This is 500 B.C. and a good 100 years before Plato argues for his Republic.
Notihng *essential* has changed in Political Science since then.
In other words we get the governments we deserve. If we're not vigilant, we can vote in a tyrannical Leader or an incometent one, or both a tyrannical and incompetent one; and even if we are vigilant, we can still vote for the guy who will hurt out society more than help it...
There's just no magic formula. But politics just lives on with the attendant axe-grinders, the hate-mongers, the fear-peddlers, the couch-generals, and so forth. A gallery of anger and misplaced faith. Sad, isn't it?
Politics is thus:
- unchanging
- A lousy pastime
- Poisonous
and yet...
- necessary.
Yep, there's the rub.
I once saw a cartoon that declared:
Panel 1. "Dogs Lick Their Balls."
Panel 2: "Dogs Lick each other's Balls"
Panel 3: "but there's one thing they don't indulge in..."
Panel 4: "It's POLITICS."
I don't know about you, but that cartoon sums up my feelings. What is truly necessary is fearless dishing out of ridicule and scorn. The modern politician has surely earned it, in my books.
Anyway, this is my dispatch from down under. Now watch everybody else from Australia blog their little treatise on politics.
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