Truth and/or Consequence

Keep Your Head - The Ting Tings (mp3)
Set Adrift On Memory Bliss - PM Dawn (mp3)

Our cultural hypocrisy continues to drive me a little bonkers.

Please note that when I say "our," I don't mean "y'all." I don't mean "me." I mean all of us. We elected George W. Bush, and we elected Barack Obama, and we bought hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of Michael Jackson music within 72 hours of his death. Did you? Did I? It doesn't matter. We did. All of us. Together.

I'm specifically troubled at the moment by our claim to give a rat's ass about truth, about honesty, about sincerity. Truth is, we don't like truth. We don't prefer honesty. We don't want sincerity.

Maybe we want all of these things -- more often than not, anyways -- out of our loved ones and close friends. But once you get past that first circle of connections, we as a society don't want any of these things from anyone else. What we want, what we expect, what we demand, is simplicity. We want things easy to ignore, easy to digest, and easy to forget. This is my best conclusion after seeing how the journalistic and political cognoscenti reacted to Gov. Mark Sanford's (R - SC) weird press conference-slash-confession of adultery.

What I'm asking of you, dear reader, is to put aside your judgment of the man's actions for just a minute, because my focus here is not so much on his misdeed, but on our collective reaction to his press conference.

On this everyone agrees: Sanford's rambling explanations of his disappearance and, um, ignoble actions were unscripted and unrehearsed. What he said came from something close to his heart. It was sincere, unflattering and almost embarrassingly foolish.

On this most of the talking heads agree: He's a f*#king moron for saying all that stuff without a script and without rehearsing it and without having his dearly beloved wife standing behind him.

NPR had an interview with one of the dudes who helped Clinton script and rehearse his explanations for allowing an intern to fellate him on numerous occasions. And this guy kind of mocks Sanford for getting up in front of reporters and speaking from his wacked-out screwed-up poorly-organized heart rather than the trite mea culpa whilst the humiliated spouse stands quietly in the background showing symbolic support for her moron husband.

We live in a world where Jon and Kate announce in front of cameras their intention to divorce, but hold off on allowing the general public to know of their intentions for months so that their "revelation" can occur as a part of their television series. They hide and delay the truth so that the truth can be televised in a more dramatic and revenue-generating fashion.

We live in a world where Adam Lambert can't or won't or shouldn't admit or acknowledge that he's as gay as Zorro's blade until after the American Idol season has concluded because it might mess with the voting? Because it would hurt ratings? It only matters that there were reasons that people in charge knew it was better to be deceptive or misleading rather than acknowledge truth.

We live in a world where politicians seem to script every single breath they take. The more scripted and planned, the more likely the public will eat it up. We know this is true because each successive POTUS seems better and better at scripting, plotting, orchestrating rather than just doing. I can hardly believe it, but Obama is even better-scripted and better "on message" than Bush.

The more important someone is culturally, the less genuine we want them to be. We only want them to be able to act genuine. We want them adaptable and malleable, adjustable like ladders and sweatpants.


As for judging Sanford, I'm totally cool with it. He opened the door a good bit by throwing big stones at others previously in his shoes. Further, it's tough to argue with the logic that Gov. Sanford baldly neglected his duties as governor by disappearing without letting his staff (or family) know where he was.

And maybe this whole "honesty" thing is a hair-splitting matter in the big scheme of things. But somehow Sanford's confession makes him feel more human to me than Clinton's, or John Edwards' or Jim Bakker's, or... well, the list goes on. Does it make him less guilty or less responsible or any such thing? No. But it feels more real.

And dammit, shouldn't that somehow count for something?

What'd You Say? Sorry, I Was Texting.

Haunted (When the Minutes Drag) - Love and Rockets (mp3)

Please do me and yourself a favor and take the 3:22 seconds necessary to watch this guy from TED.com:



Sometimes -- and when you're an egotistical attention freak like me, it's very rare -- you feel it's more important that someone else's brilliant observations be viewed in the stead of your own.

"It's the shared narratives that make us a culture."

Everything about his brief talk gives me pause. His brief talk, complete with damning pictures, is likely to have a more significant long-term impact on how I use and interact with my phone versus my surroundings in a more substantial way than Fast Food Nation managed to alter my dietary choices. At the very least I'm gonna think before I respond to those hip vibrations. (Yes, insert your own fun Michael Scott jokes here.)

None of this is intended to point fingers at anyone reading this. We're all the captains of our own ship -- well, us and fate/God/Stephen Hawking -- and how you steer yours is yo biznass. But something about the picture of that girl taking a picture of her getting a very awkward kiss leaves me really cold. Something about 2,000 cell phones being raised during the Obama Moment leaves me really sad. Something about that dude texting when his child is staring up at him, hungry for his attention, leaves me achingly guilty and horrified.

More and more often, I'm in meetings where the person who called the damn meeting gets a call and excuses himself or herself from the damn meeting they called. They gather people into a room and then leave these people to talk to other people, leaving us serfs to sit around and stare at one another, realizing how friggin' low on the totem we must be.

And teenagers -- I'm not one of those bitter adults, I swear -- they seem to be living half their life, often more, staring at tiny screens while the beauty of life swirls around them. But because they're attuned to that screen, what's around them gets labeled "boring." I don't mention this to damn them, but to wonder what kind of effect this will have -- for better or worse -- on their adulthood, after they've spent years, literally, communicating more with people via satellite and DSL than via actual speaking to actual people.

We are increasingly living meta-existences, lives based more on what kind of reality we can "share" with others who aren't physically with us at the moment than on what kind of reality we can share with those around us IN the moment. It might not be all bad -- and there's more than plenty good about it -- but it's still a little frightening, and I feel better for sensing a real need to be at least a little more conscientious about it.

If I'm texting someone in the middle of something else, there are one of two reasons: (1) I'm less interested in what's happening in reality than what could or should happen by communicating with someone via cyber-reality; (2) I'm so intrigued by my environment that I feel this intrigue and fascination can be increased by sharing it with someone who's not present.

In the instance of (1), it seems shameful but understandable. With (2), I'm not sure why it can't wait until later, until being involved in (2) doesn't risk superceding the very reason for roping them in to begin with.

But mostly I'm still trying to figure it all out...

"Haunted..." comes from one of the greatest soundtracks of all time, She's Having a Baby. You should leave work now, watch the movie, buy the soundtrack, and offer to have John Hughes' baby. Just sayin'.