A Dazzling Sort Of Populism
A View From Here
Remarks of Deb Weiss
September 21, 2000
This article is a lot of fun. Deb Weiss is a regular and zany contributor to the
Druge Report. This little piece goes very far to support The Polar Bear's long held contention that contrary to all the hype, the Red League (Democrats) is really the party of the ultra rich as well as of the poor, in fact everyone who does not consider themselves middle class (bourgeois). The Great American Bourgeoisie are Blue League (Republican) supporters. Every time one hears "it only benefits the rich" from a Red League politician, the lie is told and their supporters who are legion cheer. The real people the Red league wants to thwart are the Middle Classes. By the way, before reading this piece, check this out. Some folks are On The Barge, some are String Pullers, whatever. They just don't want to miss the parties.You have to wonder -- given the loopy talk coming out of Hollywood these days -- if the creative set is so addled by years of self-indulgence that they've misinterpreted Mr. Gore's merry campaign-trail guarantee, "Free drugs for everyone!" Kiddies -- you DO understand that the veep is talking about prescription medicines. Don't you?
Whatever. It's getting weird out there in Goreland, now that the passions of the pretty people are engaged.
Consider Alec Baldwin, the Serious Actor. He recently declared his intention to leave the country if Mr. Bush is elected.
Mind you, the comment appeared in an Associated Press wire story, which rather undermines its credibility. (There are so many young fiction-writers working for the AP, nowadays.)Still, it's the kind of remark we've come to expect from Mr. Baldwin, who is an Artist -- a man of Feeling. Once, offended by an intrusive photographer, he sprayed the fellow's truck with shaving cream, then broke his glasses --and his nose.
It's not the kind of thing that, say, Charlton Heston could get away with.
Mr. Baldwin pretty clearly did assert that he'd leave the country if George W. won the presidency. However -- whatever effect he may have expected to achieve with his creepy self-righteousness -- he wasn't prepared for the nearly universal cheer it evoked ("yo, Alec! -- is that a threat or a promise?")
Backing and filling, he issued a peevish denial, in which he blamed the "rumor" on internet reporter Matt Drudge, who had sinned by providing a link to the Associated Press story on his web site.
All this hubbub added to the fun, I suppose. Still, it was bizarre.
Before we'd quite recovered from Mr. Baldwin's buggy conviction that anyone gives a bureaucrat's behind WHERE he sets up housekeeping (just so long as he doesn't do it anywhere near us), up popped Mr. Elton John, offering words of wisdom to the huddled masses of Beverly Hills.
The well-known British historian and political scientist -- who has, it must be conceded, written some jolly good tunes, in between lost weekends -- declared that a George Bush victory would send America reeling back into the dark ages.
To be precise: "The vice president...wants this country to go forward," said Mr. John, according to the Reuters News Service, "and if you vote for him, it will go forward. But it's back to the Dark Ages, I'm afraid, if you vote for the other guy."
Mr. John (his real name, poor boy, is Reginald Dwight) uttered these words at a gaudy, celebrity-saturated, $10,000-a-plate Silicon Valley fundraiser hosted by megabucks Novell executive Eric Schmidt (his lavish home heavily fortified against the Masses), the event was aswarm with gadzillionaires, rooting enthusiastically for Fightin' Al, the Workingman's Friend.
No prisoners of starvation anywhere in sight: just wall-to-wall money, and all the posh presumption that goes with it.
Mr. John, the Reuters correspondent noted, was wearing a knee-length black brocade jacket. Something more than a little medieval about the whole business, if you ask me.
Vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman purred gratefully for his new best friends. "We're both fans of the products out of the entertainment industry," he told them. "It's true from time to time we have been, will be, critics, but I promise you this: we will never put the government in the position of telling you, by law, through law, what to make." (Actually, Senator, the U.S. Constitution made that promise long before you ever thought of it.)
Senator Lieberman is, of course, the purest man in American politics: so religious, he's downright cute. As CNN's Judy Woodruff might put it, with that adorable little debutante twinkle of hers, "he's taken God away from the Republicans!"
Like Al and Tipper before him, the good Senator once made considerable political hay out of attacks on the Hollywood slime-machine.
But that was then, and this is now. Alec and Elton and all the glossy vanguard understand instinctively that he didn't mean a word of it.
Indeed, his hypocrisy is precisely what seduces them: it's so like their own.
It's eerie, from this distance, to watch the yin-yang bond between Clintonism and Hollywood deepening into a second phase, as the Gore campaign unfolds: celebrity politics, corrupt and unreal, like a Congressman's wet dream. The Clinton touch is everywhere -- he's the Dr. Morbius of modern politics.
Movie buffs may remember Dr. Morbius, the narcissistic villain of the 1959 science-fiction classic, "Forbidden Planet."
Dr. Morbius and his young daughter are the sole survivors of a interplanetary expedition that has gone horribly awry. His fellow-crewmen have been killed off one by one, by a savage force that has spared only Morbius and his child.
It turns out (discount Freud was always hot in Hollywood) that the monster is Dr. Morbius's own unbridled Id. In the end, inevitably, he destroys himself.
But there the analogy breaks down. Hollywood, after all, is the planet where nothing is forbidden.
At least, not to Democrats.
Thank-you very much, Deb.
"Be seeing you..."
The Polar Bear