In today's America, everyone wants to be in show business. It started when Huckleberry kids once chased after circus trains, young girls left home to rent a room in Hollywood to become a star, and now when even grownups can't pass up a chance to wave at a TV camera or worse yet go on a reality show to spill their dirty libidos for a giddy nation to watch...!
You wonder when oh when does the madness finally peak and peter out? I think Freud and Donald Trump have proved: Never. Consider three current examples --
* Susan Boyle -- sweet insulated cat-lover -- gets into the slick hands of Simon Cowell who has now packaged her American arrival with every obvious (yet successful) gimmick in the old B.T. Barnum handbook. Heavily promoted album...staged crowds at the airport...out-of-nowhere Susan sweatshirts and hats...blushing network interviews and concerts...all precisely timed to keep paying off her handlers until either the public tires or the handlers find a new Susan!
* Tiger Woods -- international icon tumbled from its altar -- is currently the target of every "I-feel-his-wife's-pain" mistress from Hawaii to the 19th hole at Augusta. Between their well-paid-for angst and Tiger's well-planned-silence, we are voraciously eating up every salty morsel. Of course, sanctimoniously shaking our heads on cue. But not to worry. The PR boys know exactly how to schedule a bigger-than-before comeback for gullible us. You know, in proper sequence: Isolation....rehab...wife-by-his-side statement....the inevitable decision of who gets the closeup contrition statement, either Oprah or Barbara...finally the triumphant come-from-behind PGA Tournament victory!
* Jesus -- unmarried Jewish son from Galilee who everyone from preacher to politician loves to quote. Only if he were to make a comeback in America, they'd make him hire a PR firm. You can be sure this second coming would call for a space shuttle arrival on the White House Lawn...blessings while walking from shuttle to entrance... lunch with the President and special liturgical guests...blessings again while strolling to the waiting helicopter... flight to Hollywood to sign contract with Steven Spielberg for Christmas 2010 blockbuster movie....then jet to the Vatican where he would give his internationally televised second Sermon on the Mount!
American show business -- everybody wants in the act....! You and me -- we're the suckers in the audience...!
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I would like to think if Jesus came here, it would be like in Oh God, with George Burns. He would appear to one person to spread his word....not in the commercialized version you describe....that I fear is closer to the way it would happen. Sad statement on our times!
ReplyDeleteSay that's right -- the George Burns version! I'd like that too...
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