One of the very best TV villains of all time has to be Miles Drentell, the amoral advertising agency executive in thirtysomething. One of the show's many memorable moments was his speech to Michael, the show's main protagonist, in the next-to-last episode.
Michael had criticized a client who fired his company's celebrity spokesman because he protested the Gulf War. Drentell's response was a speech to Michael explaining the nature of the advertising business, and chiding him for not having been aware of that reality. It was a spine-chilling moment of existential cynicism.
I keep thinking of Drentell's speech lately, as I read reactions here to Obama's transition moves and Rick Warren's role in the Inaugural. So much so that I had to dig up the speech. The speech itself begins at 5:15, but I recommend watching from 3:57. Transcript and my commentary after the jump.
Miles: I'm curious to know, Michael, just what you think this company does? On a very basic level, you seem ignorant of what you and I do for a living. Have you been sleepwalking all this time? In a trance? I don't know how else to explain your coming in here with that "I'd like to buy the world a Dursten" concept.
Michael: All right Miles, we'll give Dursten his patriotism, full tilt, Yankee Doodle, everybody's gonna feel safe, and united, and secure, and God bless America, man!
Miles: From sea to shining sea.
Michael: Which is great, because I do believe God does bless this country. But he blesses all the rest of them too, doesn't he?
Miles: This conversation is approaching inanity.
Michael: All Randy Towers did is ask a question, Miles. Just because we won the war doesn't mean we can't ask any more questions, does it?
Miles: The thing that most apalls me is your hypocrisy.
Michael: MY hypocrisy??
Miles: Do you actually imagine there's some difference between this campaign and everything else that we do?
Michael: It IS different, Miles!
Miles: No, it is not.
Michael: It has to be!
Miles: Or what?
You know what I love about this country? Its amazingly short memory. We're a nation of amnesiacs. We forget everything. Where we came from, what we did to get here. History is last week's People magazine, Michael. So don't pretend to cry for Randy Towers --- no one really cares.
Michael: All he did was express an opinion.
Miles: He expressed an unpopular opinion. No one wants to be unpopular. That's why we're here. That's the dance of advertising. We help people become popular. Through popularity comes acceptance. Acceptance leads to assimilation. Assimilation leads to bliss.
We calm and reassure. We embrace people with the message that we're all in it together, that our leaders are infallible, and that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong.
That is what we do. It's what we've always done, and under your gifted stewardship, what we will continue to do, onward toward the millennium. In return for our humanitarian service, we are made rich.
I'm sorry if you misunderstood the nature of this covenant, but you've done so well up till now.
I thought you knew.
Later in the same episode, realizing that Miles is right about the advertising business -- at least as it is generally practiced -- Michael leaves Miles a handwritten note saying "I QUIT," and walks away from his job.
I'm curious to know, [some] Kossacks, just what you think bipartisanship and inclusion mean? On a very basic level, you seem ignorant of what is entailed in bringing together opposing factions within a community. Have you been sleepwalking all this time? In a trance? I don't know how else to explain your coming here with that "Obama shouldn't give that hatemonger a forum" concept.
The thing that most appalls me is your hypocrisy. Do you actually imagine there's some difference between the intolerance and condemnation you complain of in the right wing, and the intolerance and condemnation you direct at those you consider hatemongers?
You know what I love about this country? Its diversity. Its insistence on the primacy of our right to be, think and speak as individuals. The freedom to believe what our conscience dictates, however unpopular, and express those beliefs publicly without having to fear the knock on the door in the middle of the night.
Creating unity from this diversity has always been one of our guiding principles, but few practice it. Barack Obama does. He understands that it means giving our worst enemies the respect we demand they give us, because they don't believe we deserve it any more than we believe they deserve it.
Like Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. before him, Obama understands that the way to defeat evil is not to silence it and send it underground, but to expose it in the bright light of day -- and then, in the marketplace of ideas, to show how the basic human needs that all of us, on both sides, are striving for, can be better met by taking a more enlightened path.
That is why he is where he is, leading our nation and the world into the new millennium.
I'm sorry if you misunderstood the nature of the bipartisanship and inclusiveness that Obama campaigned on. You have always sounded so sincere in your passionate criticisms of small-minded intolerance. I thought you knew.
Obama is right. Maybe it's because I was brought up on the idea that morality includes loving one's enemies, so this is nothing new or alien. Whatever the reason, I'm in it for the long haul. I cheered when Michael quit his job, but I'm not quitting this. I hope the rest of you won't either.