Rhinocrisy

Three of the most-viewed videos on YouTub today are of Hillary Clinton allegedly crying, or “tearing up”. I, for one, don’t buy it. If you haven’t seen it, here it is:

Clinton is giving a relatively boiler-plate speech about how much she “cares about our country”, and how she “passionately believes” in what she is doing. That, I DO buy: her passion is lust, and we all know what she’s lusting for. But what is she “tearing up” over? Who can tell?

This morning I woke up to some lady on NPR marveling at Hillary’s display of genuine emotion. She interviewed the lady who asked the question, and several others who testified that Hillary’s tears^* had convinced them to vote Clinton! at the very last minute. After vomiting on my pillow, I thought to myself “How the hell am I going to clean this up?” “My God, are we really so starved for political theater that we’re willing to swallow whatever horseshit act some politician can throw at us?” The lady who asked the question, incidentally, did NOT vote Clinton - she voted Obama, because the previous night, Obama’s stirring speech had “moved her to tears”.

I’m truly astonished that people can maintain this level of vacuousness. And not, apparently, a small handful of people - the majority of American adults. Shouldn’t there be an epidemic of head-implosion going on?

^* Which, frankly, are not in evidence in the video to mine eyes. Can you see ‘em?

Yesterday I happened to watch the above advertisement on television. It made me more enraged than I have been in a long time, so that by the end of it I was swearing loudly at the screen and flipping it the bird with both hands. Here was some marrowless, etiolated corporation, deigning to tell me what my dreams had been as a child, attempting to rewrite my memory! “That was your dream”? No. No, no. My dreams weren’t so hollow. I didn’t dream of owning your pathetic piece of plastic bric-a-brac, you vampires. My dreams were much larger. I dreamt of rocketing through endless space and of walking on the flat, black bottom of the ocean. I dreamt of moving the sun, of churning clouds into whirlpools in the sky, of opening my hand and releasing hummingbirds, of shaking gold dust from my hair, kissing rose-fingered Eos as she came up over the horizon, spreading my wings and flying. I dreamt I was Batman. I was Hanuman. I was Hercules, wrapped in the skin of the Nemean lion. I was the Buddha. I was all of Creation.

This is an evil plague, my beloved friends. This is a disgusting and savage attack on all of humanity. Stealing our dreams? What else do they take every day? My capacity to love has shriveled up - I have been taught that it should not extend beyond the clarity of my love’s skin, the luster of her hair, the mere shape of her bones. My capacity to be loved is a similar husk - my worth is decided by the scent I wear and the type of orange-infused vodka I drink. I have no aspirations. I am merely a collection of desires for material possessions. For them I bend and obey.

!

Another conversation I had in my kung fu class produced this idea:

Consider the possibility that Paris Hilton does not exist. There never was any such person, nor is there a younger sister Nicky Hilton. There IS an actress who plays Paris Hilton. Her name is Claudia Farraday, and she is employed by a small and obscure production studio. A few years ago this studio paid a large and undisclosed amount of money to the Hilton family to make use of their family name. They would create a character, a true-to-life character around whom they would build a brand. Television shows, videos, clothing lines, makeup - you name it. All built up with far more verisimilitude than any screen creation could offer, because this one would actually BE real - as far as anyone knew.

They engineered their creation perfectly: she would start quietly, appearing as a model here and there - to establish credibility. Then she would blow up big, with instant notoriety that would fuel the growth of her prime-time television show. If it went well, they could move on from there… maybe maneuver for a book deal. Pepper her life with curious and scandalous incidents that would attract the attention of the appropriate consumer brackets. Quoi? Paris Hilton’s private phone book was hacked and published on the Internet? How salacious! (”Yes - Danger paid quite a bit for that little piece of promotional theater.”)

It was the perfect mechanism, for a public jaded by threadbare, aging forms of entertainment. Those old dog-and-pony shows wouldn’t work on this tough, calloused public. But a sucker-punch, a fake - a dose of concocted reality. Ah. That would catch them unawares.