Simeon Flick Journal

11/10/06

MONEY TRAIL: AN OP-ED RANT ON WASHINGTON AND HOLLYWOOD

It’s been said that money is the root of all evil. I think a truer statement is that money is one of the many subterranean tendrils of evil (adjacent to religious fundamentalism and other forms of tangible and intangible avarice) that feed the benevolent, organic tree of life.

If we take a hard look at where (and to whom) the lion’s share of money is being allocated these days, an ugly truth emerges: It is bestowed upon the liars and non-needy among us, hand over fist. The people in this country who earn the most money and are granted the highest social status are literally paid to deceive us .

POLITICIANS

They run the country, after all, so I suppose they’re entitled to the sartorial trappings that come with the job. Still, there’s always something surreptitious about politicians, especially those Republicans who were just routed out of Capitol Hill. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely, well...there’s no such thing as absolute power anymore, but apparently a little goes a long way with our elected officials! The character of our nation’s people has become so weak that only the smallest hint of temptation is needed to unlock Pandora’s snuff box. Even when refined and diluted, the cocaine of power is still enough to enslave and ruin a man...

Our politicians are paid to lie to their constituency. I suppose it comes with the job—you can’t please every demographic in politics. There’s always some overlooked interest group whose ducats don’t squeak loudly enough to get the grease. But I believe that deception has become such an integral part of the politicians’ job that it now acts as a kind of subtly sanctioned nudge towards the temptations of deeper corruption, not unlike how many conservatives see marijuana as a “gateway drug.” When did the politicians’ focus shift from representing the people to nailbiting over lobby and reelection funds? Probably hard to pinpoint an exact event, but I bet the implementation of federal income tax almost a hundred years ago now was a contributing factor.

It could be posited (and somewhat easily defended) that the assassin of every dead politician had a larger group with a monetary motive for murder behind them. Lincoln denied the South their slaves, who essentially provided the plantation owners with free, profit-distending labor. John F. Kennedy severed ties with the mob that put him in power, while brother Robert, who was also assassinated (quite possibly for similar reasons), acted as John’s hammer, biting the very same hand of organized crime that initially fed both of their rises to power. Most people think these three politicians lost their lives in the fight for civil rights, but dig deep enough and you’ll eventually find a money trail underneath the surreptitious smokescreen of history.

Bush sanctioned the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses. No WMDs and no WTC disaster masterminds were found, and now we’ve senselessly lost over 2,000 of our sons and daughters to a war in a country whose government we have almost irreparably fubared in the name of democracy. The real impetus for invasion was probably to get rid of Sadaam so we could get at his oil, the sweet junk of our useless dependency, and the envy of oil tycoons everywhere (Dubya and his dad not the least among them).

Bush probably should’ve been impeached or imprisoned for these crimes by now...why is he still in office? Because he has stayed true to the big oil money that put him there. It’s a bit funny now, in light of this, to think that Bill Clinton almost got sacked for a sexual indiscretion.

THESPIANS

I’ll preface the following by saying that acting, particularly live theater, is an admirable skill and I respect the work our better actors have put in to their craft to perfect the technical and aesthetic aspects of what they do. Some amazing stories have been told on stage and screen and I believe there is substantial merit to the inspiration, levity, consciousness expansion and pure entertainment value that many of these stories have imparted to society.

But it’s hard to respect dramatic artists, especially in today’s movie industry, when they’re essentially being paid an inordinate amount of money to lie to the public. We give them millions of dollars to lie to themselves as they pretend to be someone—or something—they are not (granted, sometimes they find a bit of themselves in their roles); we pay them more money than anyone could ever possibly need so they’ll lie to us by telling someone else’s story. Finally, by giving them so much money, power and societal status, they crumble under the weight of the fallacy of their own unsustainable cinematic persona that they’re measured against by the rest of the world, specifically their fans.

Most celebrities were compelled to seek stardom by one dysfunction or another, and the most unstable of the A list celebrities ultimately succumb to their socially reinforced, prefabricated self-images, suffocating under the weight of latent idealistic pathologies, such as false omnipotence or perfection, that are allowed to ferment in the vat of excessive wealth. Tom Cruise’s real-life image has become an extension of characters from movies like Top Gun, in which he plays the unbeatable underdog to perfection. But this year the image backfired when his fundamentalist championing of Scientology got him into hot water with Brooke Shields and Matt Lauer, and he essentially got fired from Paramount for making a fool of himself on Oprah, where he emphatically tried to convince the world he was in love with Katie Holmes. His fist-pumping couch dance came off more like Caligula going nuts in the pleasure dome than Caesar returning victoriously to Rome.

What makes it more difficult to bear is that Hollywood is running out of new ideas. The bloated studios are lying to the general public, especially younger denizens, by attempting to capitalize on terrible remakes of old material as though they were fresh off a young screenwriter’s laptop. Mainstream Hollywood has become a gutless, saccharine shadow of its former self, providing non-nourishing cotton candy for the soul, avoiding risk by sheltering in tried-and-true, well-traveled old stories, investing almost exclusively in paltry sequels, unforgivable remakes and ridiculous adaptations, and then passing them off as fresh entertainment. A perfect example of this retread-mania is the movie Hairspray, which started as a movie, was made into a Broadway play, and has now been remade into a movie again (it’s called Hairspray: The Movie). !!!

CELEBUTANTES AND CELEBREALITY

What makes it even HARDER to bear is the latest, insubstantial, disingenuous way many of our public figures are becoming famous. The new version of the starmaking machinery has embraced visibility over talent in its self-perpetuating creation of new stars. Fame is the new fame, a cheap simulation of a status previously obtained as a byproduct of doing something impressive really well and very successfully over the course of a long career in the public eye. Fame is now simulated through concentrated overexposure via reality shows and tabloid journalism and accepted as the genuine article, with the vehicle of ascension—the talent—running a distant second to ubiquity. I hardly need to name names here or back up my assertions for argument’s sake; they’re on the covers of all the tabloids you just looked at on your way through the supermarket, famous merely for being famous.

THE PAPARAZZI

The Paparazzi get paid lots of money to perpetuate the lie of the false celebrity persona by photographing them in public places. They provide the premiere commodity in the starmaking exchange between idol and fans; visual accessibility. They’re paid to photograph the truth of celebrity life, be it sensationalized or grossly trivial (!), and in their money lust to get the exclusive shot of Brittney Spears de-wedging her knickers they sometimes take it a little too far. As tired and sickened as I am of hearing about Lindsey Lohan every single day, her and her car don’t deserve the pummeling the Paparazzi have been giving her lately to get the magic shot. Princess Dianna is grand molling in her grave.

CELANTHROPY

It’s hard to know what to make of Brangelina...in the end, part of me doesn’t care how their philanthropic work gets done just as long as it does...but then part of me feels like they’re bringing something tawdry into the whole affair, like con artists at a birthday party. They’re attaching their names to the cause(s), names that conjure false images and representations of themselves through the characters they’ve played. How do we know that it’s not all an act, a publicity stunt for the next installment of the movie of their lives? How can we believe it’s real when all we see of it is presented via the very same media that gave them their fame? How can we know that the impetus to help their fellow man is genuine and not some attempt to assuage the guilt they feel about the overprivileged, selfish lives they’ve led?

* * *

I’ll climb down off my prosthelytizing crate now and meditate on a lyric by Neil Peart of Rush:

Big money goes around the world
Big money underground
Big money got a mighty voice
Big money make no sound
Big money pull a million strings
Big money hold the prize
Big money weave a mighty web
Big money draw the flies

Sometimes pushing people around
Sometimes pulling out the rug
Sometimes pushing all the buttons
Sometimes pulling out the plug
Its the power and the glory
Its a war in paradise
Its a cinderella story
On a tumble of the dice

Big money goes around the world
Big money take a cruise
Big money leave a mighty wake
Big money leave a bruise
Big money make a million dreams
Big money spin big deals
Big money make a mighty head
Big money spin big wheels

Sometimes building ivory towers
Sometimes knocking castles down
Sometimes building you a stairway --
Lock you underground
Its that old-time religion
Its the kingdom they would rule
Its the fool on television
Getting paid to play the fool

Big money goes around the world
Big money give and take
Big money done a power of good
Big money make mistakes
Big money got a heavy hand
Big money take control
Big money got a mean streak
Big money got no soul...

JULY/AUGUST 2006

MAY 2006

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