Cultural Garbage

Now that the election is over, I have to catch up with popular culture, or what passes for it, and the flotsam and jetsam thereof, so why don't I dispense with the most unpleasant of that putrid lot first?

First, O.J. Simpson. If there is any lingering doubt that this illiterate athletic scholarship recipient is a thug and a creep, his robbery trial should put it to rest. His sentencing is in early in December, and thanks to the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, we can clearly see that the backlash against Simpson is not about race!

Now, to Madonna's marriage imploding. I couldn't be happier. This was supposed to be a banner year for Madge. After all, she released a new record, she's on tour for the fourth time this decade, and she is - gasp! -a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame laureate. Her exhibition tour was meant to be a victory lap, having prospered for twenty-five years turning popular music into mindless dance noise (except when she turns it into a mindless phone sex soundtrack) and having gotten everything she wanted out of life by sheer virtue of her maliciously irresistable force. Well, it didn't quite work out that way, did it?

When Madge married her Guy, she boasted about having found the perfect man as if she were entitled to a happy marriage by birthright. Now that she's getting divorced, we've been learning all the sordid details of how she got her happiness. She forced it to happen. Her pre-nuptial agreement required Guy to take responsibility for and concede every argument between them. He had to agree to sexual contact on her schedule. And he had to study Jewish mysticism with her. Apparently, he finally found his backbone and stood up to her. Not that it's won him any praise; one of his soon-to-be-ex-wife's fans attacked him for making her unhappy. Well, Madge learned the hard way that you can't be happy all the time, and you can't force it like a ballad vocal.

Sometimes, life sucks, and making so much money off the musically illiterate that you can buy anything you want and go anywhere you please isn't going to prevent life from sucking. Nor will studying Kaballah every moment you're not on stage or in the bathroom. Madge is very upset - especially since none of the few people who saw the movie she directed deems it worthy of unadulterated acclaim. She actually insisted that her movie is good enough for that blamed the negative reaction to it on prejudice. She's going to have a hard time finding out that you can't have it all! Not everyone is going to love her! Some of us will continue to hate her, and we Madge-haters can't all be idiots - and we can't all be conservative Republicans either.

You have trouble, Madge. For once, deal with it!

And please don't take too long to follow George Walker Bush off the radar screen.

To mix words from different languages, this is schaudenfreude par excellence!