June 14, 2007
Telling reactions
The way people are reacting to the big news items of the day has a lot to say about the make up of those people. Whether talking entertainment, culture or politics, the reactions to the major stories revealed plenty about tastes, priorities, loyalties and principles.
Take the final episode of The Sopranos where the music mercifully cuts and the screen goes black in the seeming middle of a tensely shot mundane family conversation. The scene brought no obvious resolution, although many hints seem to indicate Tony was finally taken out by one of many enemies. But this is never made clear and many people cried foul.
The masses wanted some sort of resolution to end the show’s eight years of casual violence, mobster humor and family moments. The show ended with a mystery, Tony could just as easily have lived on to face the looming indictment, planning Meadow’s wedding, nurturing A.J.’s budding entertainment career, watching Carmela struggle through another house and of course mercilessly running his crime syndicate.
I loved the ending and don’t really care which outcome is what “really” happened. The show was always well done and both a subtle take on murder or an abrupt jump from the story that, like the real world, never really stops even if major character disappears seems like a fitting ending. But ambiguity does not seem to be what the majority wants from its entertainment.
And there is certainly nothing ambiguous about one of the public’s biggest fascinations these days, the currently incarcerated Paris Hilton. The world’s most preeminent skank is all over the news as she’s been in and out of jail. The woman who made her fame on bad porn and worse taste go caught receiving special famous-person privileges and people have seemed absolutely giddy to watch her fall apart as she faces six weeks behind bars.
You’d think she’d be out of the news, being in prison and solitary confinement, but somehow she continues to make headlines every day. The cable news channels broadcast her re-imprisonment with the giddy non-stop coverage that only comes out for celebrities taking a big embarrassing fall. The coverage is unrelenting like when they’re covering the first bit of a war, but the tone is less macho reverence and more bloodthirsty pounce.
I guess people must really have a keen interest in watching famous and wealthy people, especially when they’re brought down low, but I don’t quite understand how we got to the point where the most important thing happening in the world is the aimless life of one unremarkable girl. The resources devoted to covering everything Paris could be redirected to informing about events and happenings that could actually affect the audience’s lives or injustices and corruption where they exist. But if that was what the public wanted from the news, they’d be demanding it just as loudly as they decried the end of The Sopranos. Instead, the silence lends support to the earlier demands for uncomplicated escapism in entertainment.
Finally we come to politics where Scooter Libby’s own imprisonment is looming and the presiding judge isn’t going to let him hang out at home while his appeal process plays out. Supporters have been complaining about the injustice being done to poor Scooter since the whole thing broke, but now they’re going to step up the pressure for a Presidential pardon.
Libby was convicted of lying and obstructing an investigation into what might have been a criminal security breach from the top of the White House. His sentence fit the norms for his crime, but his supporters were outraged because Scooter’s a good family man and a loyal servant to his country and his bosses. His only crime was his deep loyalty and his supporters feel so strongly that he’s been wronged, the judge who handed down Libby’s sentence is receiving death threats.
Never mind that these people supporting Libby are the law and order types, or that they constantly puff out their chests to express their nationalist pride. In the case of Scooter, his very real crime deserves to be ignored because it was committed in as act of loyalty. In their outrage and blind support for Libby, his supporters are expressing the very anti-American belief that certain individuals should be above the law and blind fealty toward the leader is paramount.
After six years of one bungle after another it seems obvious that running a country with a leadership that values loyalty more than talent is not working so well. But support of Scooter Libby is a pure expression of devotion to the concept that loyal service, regardless of motive or result, is the highest calling and an infallible pursuit. Those ideals led us into Iraq and led the response to Katrina, and that’s where we finally arrive at a place where I wish reality were a bit more like TV.
Tony Soprano valued and rewarded loyalty in his subordinates, but he also demanded competence, and results. It’s too bad our leadership’s biggest supporters don’t have such stringent requirements.