Silly in America: Jacko, Camus, Sinatra, and Halloween as a National Holiday
In Georgetown last week I almost bought a T-shirt with the following logo:
“To be is to do” Camus (Actually I thought it was Socrates, but reading Camus is less annoying)
“To do is to be” Sartre
“Do be do be do” Sinatra
(Another one added “Yaba daba doo” Fred Flintstone)
I was tempted to buy it, but was discouraged from doing so: someone told me it would look silly on me, or maybe I would look silly in it. I didn’t think so, but refrained from buying it anyway, maybe it was the $15.99 price tag. After I returned to the West Coast, and watching, reading, and listening to the Michael Jackson mania from news channels, politicos, and pundits, (even President Obama was forced into making some silly comment on Jacko) I regretted not buying it. Silly is the flavor of the week.
Luckily, nobody at the press conference in Moscow early today asked Dimiti Medvedev or Obama about Jacko. Maybe if it was W….
For some reason this reminded me of another absurd thing: an old story about a Middle East potentate who once sent a President, either Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan, a telegram congratulating him on the occasion of Halloween (he thought it was some kind of national holiday).
In some parts of the world Halloween is not 'celebrated', but everyday is Halloween: you get to spend years, maybe a lifetime, looking at masks that pass for leaders, kings, and ruling potentates. It is sort of like a mixture of Dorian Gray, Benjamin Button, and The Fly. You age but the monsters remain the same, or maybe you think they remain the same...
There is a good argument for term limits, but how does one sell it to a modern-day Pharaoh?
Cheers
mhg
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