Happy Mother’s day to all of the mothers out there.
We had a good gig last night. Not a large crowd but, an enthusiastic one. One couple came in right before we started playing and sat at a table directly in front of one of the main P.A. speakers. We don’t play real loud but, right in front of that speaker you would be getting the max dose. I thought these folks were there to eat dinner and not there for the band. Don’t know why I thought that but I did. They just didn’t have the partying with a vengeance look that a lot of the summer lake crowd has. They didn’t look like members of what we call “the prop jet set”.
So, before we played, I walked over to them and said something like, “It’s gonna be loud right their, you’re a couple of brave souls”. They just smiled politely and I went on, thinking to myself; “Well at least I warned them”. You can’t pre-judge. These people stayed the whole night; they were there to listen. They dance only once when we played Jimi Hendrix’ “Little Wing”. They both gave me a big thumbs up on their way out. It was nice.
Musically we had a few glitches on things like intros and endings, but nothing we couldn’t make our way through. We pulled out a lot of songs we had never played before. Overall, the grooves were good and we had fun. Personally, I was able to execute some things on the guitar that I have not been able to do on-stage for over two years since the M.S. thing started. So, I felt like the work I’ve been putting in lately is paying off.
Driving home last night I was listening to talk radio. On the sports station they were talking about Michael Vick’s alleged involvement in the illegal dog fighting world and athletes, in general, with moral/legal issues.
On the other station, which is a Fox affiliate, they were running a Bill O’Reilly show that I’m sure was a replay from earlier in the week. The discussion there was about Paris Hilton, Alec Baldwin and David Hasselhoff and, in general, celebrities who have moral/legal issues.
Doesn’t it seem like the news is just chock full of celebrities/athletes getting into trouble? It seems like there isn’t a day that goes by that another one of these stories pops up. Now these kind of stories are always going to be reported to the hilt because we, the audience, are interested. We either want to be reassured that celebrities are not superior people or, we enjoy seeing them dragged through the mud and broken down.
It just seems that the amount of this type of celebrity, bad behavior story is on the increase. So, I started thinking to myself; “Are these people more apt to engage in bad behavior then “normal” people because they have privilege? I thought about people that I know and deal with on a regular basis and I started to take the examples that were being discussed on the radio and thinking whether I knew people that had gone through similar trouble.
Paris Hilton; drunk driving and going to jail. Well, I know a bunch of people who have been arrested for drunk driving. I know a bunch of people who have been to jail. Of the people I was thinking about in my “circle” I couldn’t think of one who did not, somehow work through it, and go on to lead productive lives. Now, I do or, have known a few who went to prison on more serious charges than a traffic violation/DUI charge and that’s a different matter.
David Hasselhoff; recovering alcoholic that has a relapse. Well, first off, been there and done that myself. Now, I have not seen the video that everyone is talking about so I can’t comment on that specifically. But, I know a lot of recovering alcoholics/addicts and most, not all, find a way to deal with it and move on somehow.
Alec Baldwin; verbally abusing his child on a phone message. Now, I did hear this thing and I think the guy sounds nuts. You can’t judge a person’s whole character by one small piece of evidence but, based on that and other things I’ve heard him say; I don’t think he’s the kind of guy I would want to hang around with. Having said that, verbally abusing a child, is not uncommon at all. I have witnessed friends who lost their cool and said things to their children that were just as bad. If it’s an ongoing type of abuse, I don’t think that it’s going to be as apparent. It will be more hidden but, I’m sure that goes on as well.
And, even Michael Vick who is allegedly involved in the dog fighting world. Yeah, I have met several people who have been involved in that as well as cock fighting. I don’t know anybody presently that is into that stuff. There is an element, here in the Ozarks, that engages in these activities. So, I may have friends that are involved and I don’t know about it.
I’m speaking in a lot of general terms here and I don’t want to make light of any of these issues. I am trying to point out two things. One, all of these types of behavior are a fact of life and not especially uncommon. Now, I realize that the dog-fighting thing may have something to do with location. Two, that, as far as I can surmise, all of these things are not really more prevelant in the celebrity world than the real world.
Now I want to get back to O’Reilly here. I am going to be paraphrasing because I was listening while driving. O’Reilly thinks that sometime during the ’60s there was some sort of cultural shift that happened and that after that, these types of behavior became more accepted. He grew up in the ’50s and he cited some pop culture examples such as the difference in tone of movies like “Blackboard Jungle” and “American Graffiti”. He was talking about rebelism among teenagers and making the point that at some time the rebelling became less innocent. In general he seemed to be saying that over time there is more of this type of stuff (drinking, drug abuse, child abuse) going on.
He said that, in his opinion, that there is a higher degree of selfishness with kids today because they have been so glorified (the center of attention) through their entire lives. So, there is a higher percentage of people engaging in bad behavior because they feel that they can do whatever they want. And, I don’t know, either that pop culture has aided this or, pop culture becomes less innocent as a result of this.
So, my question is, do we as a society, engage in more bad behavior than we used to? I don’t know that I have a clear answer but I have some suspicions that we don’t.
These celebrity examples make it appear that things are worse. Here in the digital age, if someone gets caught doing something bad or embarrassing, it’s worldwide in an instant. Word gets around faster where before things went unnoticed and undocumented because there wasn’t a camera or recorder handy.
With things like drunk driving; the laws are stricter and more people get caught. I’m old enough to remember an age when if a cop pulled you over while drinking, most of the time they would tell you to pull over and get some sleep. Things were brushed under the rug a lot more often. Now, if there is any suspicion, they break out the breathalyzer and, if you get cited, it’s public knowledge. If you are a known entity, it’s news.
Child abuse is in no way a new phenomenon but the same thing applies. It used to be brushed under the rug.
Drug abuse? There are some different drugs around then there were years ago but people have been abusing drugs since they discovered them.
And, the dog fighting/cock fighting thing; well, that has been around since ancient times. When something, even something offensive to most, has been around that long, it tends to never totally disappear. This stuff used to be legal and commonplace so, I think there is probably less of it going on now than there used to be.
There will always be ugliness in this world. Maybe there is sometimes a little more, maybe a little less but it’s always going to be around.
So for Mr. O’Reilly’s sake (I’m pretty sure he reads this regularly), I am going to cite my own cultural example. This is the first few stanzas of the Allen Ginsberg poem “Howl” from 1956, roughly the same period as the innocence of “Blackboard Jungle”.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz
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Tags: Alec Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Vick, Paris Hilton
Cindy wrote,
That kind of commentary by pundits always makes me shake my head and laugh and think its truly a slow news day. I know Bill’s got hours a day to fill and grand sweeping statements do that, but with such little effort. Its a big obvious statement to say there was a cultural shift from thinking about your community first to thinking of yourself first in the 60s; that is indeed true. But the other change is that people realized that those communities (school, family, goverment, city,church) were full of people doing the either the immoral things they railed against or things that were culturally acceptable (child abuse, alcoholism, etc;) so the bad results therein were swept under the rug. Should more people have responded to these realisations by pointing them out and trying to lead better lives? Yes, and with the rise of the evangelical movement over the past 40 years many have…but being human a lot of people responded the other way…the more selfish and indulgent way I suppose the pundits would say.
Actors, musicians and artists (I think) by their very natures are a little more selfish than most people, even if their true heartfelt intention is to entertain the world. So They maybe inherently more prone to illegal/immoral behaviors…I’ve spent half my laugh around artists and actors and think it to be true. And I think thats been the case since time began. However I also grew up blue collar/lower middle class and I was raised by and around baby boomers. A lot of them (including my parents) engaged in a lot of the stuff that now gets instantaneous world wide news coverage if its done by a celebrity. And they did it daily! Fourtunately my folks have finally put that kind of stuff behind em. But for every one of their friends that managed to get sober and stick with it there seems to be 2 that are in jail, on harder drugs then ever, still getting in bar fights etc; And they arent actors or artists or musicians. But why address (or berate) drywallers and waitresses with these kindve problems when we got celebutants and movie stars being filmed every moment of their lives (course I guess we got Cops or Wild Video shows for the same thing with the unfamous)? In the case of the famous that weren’t born rich (ie most athletes musciians artists and actors) I dont think priviledge makes them act worse…it just makes it more likely their gonna get caught.
Gaugin abandoned his wife and child and took up with a number of the women he painted, giving several of them VD (SIDENOTE: I remember your Mom and I had a bit of a debate about that one when she was my sub in high school…she wanted to let him off ~I think~ because he divorced his European wife and married one of the natives…if I remember right). Oscar Wilde committed adultery, and because it was with a man went to jail for it. Robert Mitchum got busted with pot in the 50s and did jail time for it. Lets not forget the Stompanato murder, Bette Davis alleged abuse of her child, the Fatty Arbuckle rape case. And the litany of illegal,immoral and damn near duranged behavior by Country Music Artists of the 1950s could fill a book. All of these and 1000s more by artists in all mediums and crafts went on long before the 1960s.
Sorry to rant but it bugs me when pundits decide to comment on overexposure of the famous by…talking more about the famous. Or useing their professions as a reason to berate their very human frailties or lessen something personal about them because of it (”I dont care what some Tv star thinks about stem cell research!” Ok,but why should I care what a commentator who’s also famous and on TV thinks about it?) I remember an appearance by the head of the Catholic league going on about how actors would “fornicate with their mothers on pay per view” if it would garner them more fame and money since they were so “morally bankrupt”. Anbody who takes to a stage, or picks up a guitar or draws a person is still that core thing…a person.
Link | May 15th, 2007 at 2:55 pm