in a nutshell: an awesome display of power and technology delivering turbocharged white-knuckled thrills at a safe distance.
That’s entertainment.
And that is the real reason Michelle Obama and Jill Biden were booed while trying to raise money for veterans at this weekend’s NASCAR finale. They were just no fun.
What is entertaining about veterans? Not much. They remind us that the safe distance is not so safe and not so distant. They are living proof that that someone pays the price for good times in the currency of blood and bone. They hint that that the next to pay might be us, as surely as folks in the bleachers pay when killed in a crash the officials swore couldn’t happen. Again.
And to top it all off, veterans choose to serve anonymously, while racers are chosen to advertise blatantly. Sacrifice may get you honor, but you need corporate sponsorship for fame.
What a buzzkill. Thanks but, no thanks , First Lady.
Of course, I simplify. As a nation, we are more than just an auto race. We are also a rodeo, in which contestants abuse dumb brutes to celebrate a cowboy tradition that has disappeared as surely as drug-injected factory meat down the attendees’ throats. And we are the WWF, in which the contestants are drug-injected factory meat who brutalize each other in a rigged game until injured beyond use, discarded without remorse or placed in the Minnesota governor’s mansion, imitated, all the while, in action, thought and expression by the cream of the nation’s youth.
We love a good show some much that we have become a bad one.
America is the arena and the raceway writ large just as Rome was the greater reflection of the Colusseum and the Circus Maximus.
Which makes an historical sketch appropriate.
The ancient Roman shit hit the ancient Roman fan over time. The first stinking splat was Julius Caesar’s destruction of the Republic. This was followed shortly by Caligula’s reign, which hinted that the whole empire thing might be a bad idea, and Nero’s, which confirmed it. But the Roman upper class weighed the evidence and concluded that, while one on hand, bloodthirsty tyrants were a pain in the ass, on the other, they knew how to party. So the Rome show staggered on, alternating competent, and largely forgotten, rulers with nitwit celebrity demigods.
The best example of the latter category was Commodus, the goofball son and successor to emperor, philosopher and disappointed parent Marcus Aurelius. You may remember Commodus as the villain from Gladiator. Yes, he was real, and, according to the best accounts available, yes, he was batshit and yes, he pranced around playing tough guy in his own stadium. No, the commode was not named after him, though that would have been appropriate, and no, Russell Crowe did not kill him; that job fell to his wrestling partner, after previous assassination attempts were botched.
Commodus preferred spectacle over substance. His corrupt flunkies ran the government while the emperor produced and starred in a series of mind-bendingly expensive extravaganzas that wrecked the Roman economy. The Roman nobility considered him to be a disaster at the time, but revisionist rulers would subsequently deify him in order to associate themselves with past glory.
Almost two thousand years later, Commodus was reincarnated as Ronald Reagan, with pretty much the same results.
Now say what you will about Ronnie, the man was one hell of a performer. He had to be: how else could he, in eight short years, transform the United States from the world’s largest creditor to its biggest debtor and still come out looking like a hero? That took talent.
Of course, pop culture helped pave the way; the hero was still sellable archetype. Two of the three original Star Wars films were released in the Gipper’s time: big-budget blockbusters featuring noble, and sometime hapless,s individuals who took down an evil empire on the power of faith alone. Reagan’s handlers latched on to that plotline like a remora onto a shark and copied every element of the films, with the notable exception of Yoda’s wisdom. Also notable is the fact that the movies, unlike the administration, actually made money.
But tastes changed, and the entertainers-in-chief changed with them. The sun set on Luke, Leia and Han and rose on the alcoholic patrons of Cheers and the neurotic coffee freaks of Friends. While this crew might have been fun to pal around with, none of them would ever move heaven earth for a noble cause, much like their contemporaries, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Still, let’s give credit where credit is due: these times provided some unbeatable slapstick, as when Poppy Bush puked onto Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, and romantic comedy, as when Clinton… well you get the idea.
Yet times continued to change. Sam, Dianne, Rachel and Ross were eclipsed by Jerry, George, Cosmo and Elaine, who could take any situation, no matter how bad, and fuck it up worse. Yes, Seinfeld ended when Clinton was still in office, but it was in syndication all through the W presidency, which was itself, in large part, a rerun.
And what is the cultural norm, and therefore the driving force, of our current day? I’m by no means the first Kossack to point out that politics is now a reality show; Laura Clawson and David Phillips saw that a while back. But the comparison bears repetition and examination.
Reality TV serves an all-important function: it assures you that, no matter how low into lunatic degeneracy you have sunk, you are still better than one of the real dancing pregnant teenage housewives of the Jersey Shore.
If you want a spot in this circus, just be a compulsive liar, narcissistic enough to mistake you faults for virtues, egotistical enough to believe your own press and have an attention span short enough to forget that you’re on camera. These requirements are met, individually, by Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Rick Perry. Together they are met by Michele Bachmann.
That’s entertainment, and that’s Barack Obama’s big problem. The President eschews drama; he’s about as fun as a veterans appeal at a racetrack, but he’s in the same time slot as America’s Next Megalomaniac. Where would you advertise?
You can’t look away from reality tv or a car wreck, for the same reason: the mind freezes in the face of nausea. Luckily for the sponsors, it thaws in time for the next ad. That’s why the plots never change, and the raceway leads nowhere. That’s why we’re capable of abandoning a calm, safe driver for a flashy nutcase who will cheer until the fuel runs out, the engine wears down or steel crashes into us. That’s entertainment.