-- *shielding myself from the pelted rocks and garbage* -- that's right, that's what I said. I'm used to idiots getting happy every time they hear about a celebrity getting arrested, and assuming they have every right to know the salary of every professional athlete in the US, and not thinking about how convenient that is for the owners of professional sports teams, and related parasites like shoe companies and college and high school athletic departments. The way most fans fixate on the money being made by the athletes, without whom, of course, sports would not exist, very conveniently prevents them from even wondering how much money the team owners and the other parasites make. Great scam for the parasites. They don't have their financials in the headlines. Would you like it if your salary were published as if the public had a right to know what it was? I'm used to people who haven't spent a half-hour on their feet or eaten six ounces of vegetables in the past month, and who therefore look like Jabba the Hut, nastily mocking the looks of, oh, say, Scarlett Johansson or Matthew McConaughey. I'm used to loathesome little worms who have absolutely no sympathy for people who literally cannot step outside without being swarmed by the press, and who literally can't throw anything away without some creeps pawing through it -- I'm used to all of that. I don't like any of it but I'm used to it. But this screed about supposed privileges of celebrity by a certain Rev. Galen Guengerich, rife with leering fantasies of celebrity appetites and allusion to Greek tragedy, took even jaded me aback. Dixit Guengerich:
"this tendency to excuse libertine excesses by talented people inverts our moral hierarchy"
What?! Did I just slip into a time warp to the 1890's? Demon rum, "libertine excesses" and "our" moral hierarchy? Really? Rev Guengrich, you Unitarian member of the Council on Foreign Relations you, why don't you ask Robert Downey, Jr, to name one celebrity you didn't, just how this "buying your way out of trouble by being famous" thing works. (I realize you probably won't ask him, not F2F anyway, but if you do, and you're not frail or particularly small, I hope he punches you in the face!) (And it's very selfish of me to wish that, because if he punched you, Downey, with his long criminal record, would probably serve 30 days or more.) To name a celebrity you did name, why don't you ask Roman Polanski about the things he's gotten away with, the next time he's in NYC. Oh, that's right -- he hasn't been in the States since 1977, and probably won't be coming back soon, because the cops here still have a hard-on for him. To name two more people you named, why don't you ask Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Winehouse about the stuff they got away with -- oh, that's right, you can't, can you. You could ask Lindsey Lohan, who went from being crazily adored to pathologically hated in such a short time that it makes me worry for Jennifer Lawrence, how being a big shot made her impervious to anorexia -- no, wait, don't ask her that. She almost died from anorexia.
But you're right, of course: only showbiz stars abuse alcohol and other dangerous drugs, molest children, starve themselves and crash their cars. No, wait, that's not right at all. It's gibberish. Everything you're saying is gibberish. "We" don't have a "moral hierarchy," you and I. We have two very different ways of regarding morality. And we're only two people. And the 3rd-to-last sentence of your screed is so garbled that I don't know whether you're condemning American Hustle and Wolf of Wall Street as "glorification of exercises in excess," or praising them because their "excess" is "somehow redeemed or shown to be destructive." Do you? In any case, it's great to see that someone is on the case, that someone has not allowed himself to be distracted by things like real violence and racism and climate catastrophe with attendant famine, and instead is zeroing in on the true danger of our time: naughty movies. And don't you worry about a thing for yourself personally, you're going to be just fine: if those gigs with the Unitarian Church and the Council on Foreign Relations don't work out, there will still be many a street corner in Knoxville and Atlanta and Topeka and Boise where you will be able to thump a Bible and fit right in.
No comments:
Post a Comment