Madmen. The world is run by madmen these days. Arab fundamentalists, as portrayed in Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, humiliated to the point where they’re willing to justify slaughtering innocents to create public terror. White CEO’s in Bush’s White House enriched and self satisfied to the point where they’re willing to slaughter whole countries to protect their privileges. Madmen on both sides. And we the people in the middle, mainly wanting to live out a life. Put some bread on the table. Not be accosted by insanity. And even that is impossible. Watching some tv last night before Lost at 10. Turned to Bones: not bad froth in the past, forensic anthropologist working with FBI to solve crimes. Hardly into it when assaulted by a repulsive shot of a decaying cadaver being roamed over and eaten by dozens of black rats. Ugggh! turn it off; refuse to be accosted by this pretend, pretentious "realism." Switch to stupid sitcom, According to Jim. Whose episode turns on the puerile notion of Jim, on anniversary, wanting to fulfill his wedding dream of screwing the wife in all 10 surrounding states, and lamenting because after 15 years, they’d missed Indiana. So wifey (of course; women these days are liberated) suggests they cancel dinner plans and drive across the nearby border in their van to do it. They get to a motel, are about to run to the room after several dumb obstacles, when sister calls from home: pregnant, she’s gone into labor and desperately needs them home right away. They hightail it back. Arrive breathless, find her moaning with labor pains until, about to rush to hospital, she explodes this thunderous fart. Ho ho, that’s the problem, not labor. Big belly smiles with relief, and booms another. And to really hammer home the point for all the adolescents, Jim’s fat guy buddy rips one of his own. Ho ho.
THIS is American entertainment. The mental assault, exactly parallel to the physical one by military madmen, by the venal, profit-mad moguls who run Hollywood. With all the real drama in the world, our obscenely-rewarded creative minds can come up only with farts, and rats eating cadavers. Fake humor and fake horror to divert the masses from thinking about the real horror: the gross exploitation of the many by the few. With the trashing of the planet and the rest of life as its inevitable concomitant.
In a world dominated by such madness, such continuous assault, is there any response that would suffice?
Lawrence DiStasi
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