Some perspective: Joe Wilson, Kanyé, Serena
Seem to be down to blogging about once a week these days. Sometimes I blog, but don’t post them, as with my account of when a storm knocked down a huge tree limb, which put my driveway out of commission for a while. The blog was a bit mundane.
So I’ve apparently decided it would be more interesting to blog about not blogging it...
Well, let’s turn to, as Twitter puts it, Trending Topics. First thing I have to say to that is, most of Twitter’s Trending Topics don’t interest me. It has been interesting, all these celebrity blow-ups! Someday maybe the public will turn on all of them, like in Watchmen, where they turned on the superheroes. I would certainly relish seeing a lot of them in jail, especially the ones who think the thing to do is through stuff at hotel employees and then buy them off later. This guy created a website just to keep track of the subset, Celebrities Who Throw Phones at Underlings.
http://www.voipafriend.com/2006/04/a_brief_history_of_celebrity_p.html
This is sort of where Serena’s tirade blends the arrogance to workers with the blow-up, although, coaches yell at referees all the time in football, managers yell at umpires. The main difference is, aside from this gentile sort of ambience that comes with tennis, that networks long ago realized there was no way they could mic what the coaches and managers and players say in football and baseball. On the other hand, probably physically threatening an ump would get you kicked out of the stadium. I guess.
Kanyé’s thing was just weird because it’s hard to say he was motivated by any sort of compelling passion. He wasn’t Serena angry. I think Kanyé-gate took off because here, at last, was one thing we could nearly all agree on: he was rude. My only comment on it was, when you consider all the genuinely evil things that happen every day, it’s hard to fathom why this is what got everybody angry. True, the networks seldom show the genuine evil anymore and a lot of it isn’t filmed, much less live.
One interesting thing about all three of the recent stories, Joe Wilson’s “You Lie,” Serena, and Kanyé, is that, really, their offenses were within the context of their business environment. They really didn’t violate any actual law. (I don’t think Serena’s threat of physical violence would be taken seriously as a crime.) The three stepped out of the bounds of their organizations and have been censured by them.
My Brit friends, it occurred to me, must be rather mystified by the whole uproar over Joe Wilson’s remark, being used to their Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons! I guess here in America the president serves a sort of dual function as both a kind of royal figure and a working leader, so in some ways we accord him the sort of formal respect the queen gets, at least in person. It may be that the House of Commons could use a little more decorum. On the other hand, I sure would like to see the president subjected to the same sort of questions the P.M. gets.
So I’ve apparently decided it would be more interesting to blog about not blogging it...
Well, let’s turn to, as Twitter puts it, Trending Topics. First thing I have to say to that is, most of Twitter’s Trending Topics don’t interest me. It has been interesting, all these celebrity blow-ups! Someday maybe the public will turn on all of them, like in Watchmen, where they turned on the superheroes. I would certainly relish seeing a lot of them in jail, especially the ones who think the thing to do is through stuff at hotel employees and then buy them off later. This guy created a website just to keep track of the subset, Celebrities Who Throw Phones at Underlings.
http://www.voipafriend.com/2006/04/a_brief_history_of_celebrity_p.html
This is sort of where Serena’s tirade blends the arrogance to workers with the blow-up, although, coaches yell at referees all the time in football, managers yell at umpires. The main difference is, aside from this gentile sort of ambience that comes with tennis, that networks long ago realized there was no way they could mic what the coaches and managers and players say in football and baseball. On the other hand, probably physically threatening an ump would get you kicked out of the stadium. I guess.
Kanyé’s thing was just weird because it’s hard to say he was motivated by any sort of compelling passion. He wasn’t Serena angry. I think Kanyé-gate took off because here, at last, was one thing we could nearly all agree on: he was rude. My only comment on it was, when you consider all the genuinely evil things that happen every day, it’s hard to fathom why this is what got everybody angry. True, the networks seldom show the genuine evil anymore and a lot of it isn’t filmed, much less live.
One interesting thing about all three of the recent stories, Joe Wilson’s “You Lie,” Serena, and Kanyé, is that, really, their offenses were within the context of their business environment. They really didn’t violate any actual law. (I don’t think Serena’s threat of physical violence would be taken seriously as a crime.) The three stepped out of the bounds of their organizations and have been censured by them.
My Brit friends, it occurred to me, must be rather mystified by the whole uproar over Joe Wilson’s remark, being used to their Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons! I guess here in America the president serves a sort of dual function as both a kind of royal figure and a working leader, so in some ways we accord him the sort of formal respect the queen gets, at least in person. It may be that the House of Commons could use a little more decorum. On the other hand, I sure would like to see the president subjected to the same sort of questions the P.M. gets.