Tomorrow he’s on Dancing With The Stars…
We are the children of our technology. We have no choice.
Invent the motor car and pretty soon you have MacDonald’s, gas stations, and suburbia.
It’s inevitable. One inexorably leads to the next.
When there were only three television networks and only a half-hour of news every night, it didn’t take a lot to fill up the air time.
Stories competed for space. Only the best made it to national prominence.
But…. go to 24-hour cable news and you have so much air time to fill that almost anything qualifies.
When you had one major newspaper a day, like The New York Times, published once a day, the competition for the front pages was also pretty stiff. It had to be a pretty big story to get in the news.
But go to the millions of websites running 24/7 and they all have to be filled as well. Anything will do after a while.
It isn’t easy to be great.
Few and far between are those who can achieve true greatness.
That’s why we honor them – or at least used to.
Albert Schweitzer, Sir Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, Martin Luther King, Thomas Jefferson.
Pick your hero.
Forged in times of difficulty, they fought hard to stand above the crowd and make a difference.
No more.
Now any idiot can be canonized by a media that consumes heroes faster than reality can mint them.
So it created them instead.
Michaele Salahi, for example. A woman famous for doing nothing. I note this because I saw her name going around on the Fox News Zipper on 6th Avenue this morning. God only knows what for. But she’s but the tip of the iceberg. The Reverend (really?) in Podunk, South Carolina who is going to burn a Koran. “Snooki” from Jersey Shore. Any ‘reality stars’, in fact.
We consume people so quickly now that we long ago ran out of people of real accomplishments and, television abhorring a vacuum, simply began to create their own. Now we pop them out so fast and we have created so many that we have lost track of what real heroics and real accomplishments look like.
And… I am no Republican, but this is also how we come to elect a good TV personality with virtually no track record to the White House.
It takes a long time to achieve greatness.
And it’s a long and difficult road, filled with ups and downs, tragedies and triumphs that seasons a person; that shapes their personality.
They can’t be manufactured.
And they don’t come in nearly enough numbers to fill 1,000 cable channels every day.
So we create them instead.
We’ve created so many now that we have forgotten what true greatness even looks like.
Sarah Palin is a classic example of ‘manufactured’ greatness. Peel back the spin and there is nothing there.
And not all that different from almost everyone else who populates the news cycle.
Maybe we should change the way we report the world.
Maybe, every once in a while, the evening news should be a lot shorter.
Maybe the anchor should simply say, nothing much happened today. Good night.
Maybe the Discovery Channel should only run from 8pm to 10pm and then only run the very best programming the have.
Last night we sat in bed and watched Master Chef. The climax: would the souffle rise? In real time. The clock was ticking.
We looked at each other.
Is this what television has come to?
A half-witted racist in South Carolina gets a full half-hour on the Today Show?
Is this what news has come to?
Maybe there just aren’t enough truly great people or stories to go around.
Maybe they’re as rare as rockinghorse shit… and maybe that’s why they’re special.
And maybe we should keep it that way.
7 Comments
DH September 13, 2010
Maybe WE Have Become Our Own Heroes or Villians Depending on Perceptions
bill September 10, 2010
There is no a shortage of heroes, only a shortage of recognition.
Which wonderfully is just how the real heroes like it, they are usually the last person that would want to be called a hero
I think we are confusing the word hero with notoriety, publicity, celebrity, fame, where as the real heroes hide as doctors, nurses, teachers, and a multitude of nameless people doing remarkable things.
invitedmedia September 09, 2010
dang, i thought you’d have something to say about sulzberger’s “the nyt will stop printing “one day””.
i’ll stop back by tomorrow!
Austin Beeman September 09, 2010
The problem with the situation is that there ARE real heroes or ‘real characters.’ People living in Kentucky, or Panama, or rural China who are doing extraordinary things. Or maybe ordinary things with extraordinary grace.
It is just that the people trained in how to tell those stories effectively are stuck in wealthy urban centers like NYC or LA or London. And most of those people would prefer to prop up and Obama or Palin or Snookie.
Sad but hopefully changing. Just not changing as fast as any of us would like.
Cary Abbott September 09, 2010
I cannot believe how right Andy Warhol was! But I think, like you suggest, true greatness is a rare thing that will rise above the noise.
I am a Republic (almost ashamed to admit it these days) and I cannot understand the Palin thing. Her daughter is going to be on Dancing with the Stars. How on earth is Bristol a star?!
My mind is boggled daily, but there’s a song from the 80s, I’m holding out for a hero. They’re there, we just have to look hard and pray and hope some talented VJ can let the rest of the world know they still exist.
Ian McNulty September 10, 2010
Then, of course, there’s the question of who owns the media, what their values might be and what influence that might have on who gets the oxygen of publicity and who doesn’t?
Whatever happened to
All the heroes?
All the Shakespearoes?
They watched their Rome burn.
Whatever happened to
Leon Trotsky?
He got an ice pick
That made his ears burn.
No More Heroes Anymore
The Stranglers, 1977
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6yTRq_rJg4
We’re so pretty,
Oh so pretty,
Vacant.
The Sex Pistols, 1977
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmHhB9zV_rQ
No More Heroes
Westlife, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl8Mgus9Rg0
Trend here anyone?
Kevin September 09, 2010
Just to correct you the idiot preacher man is near Gainesville, Florida.
I really like this blog.
There really hasn’t been any real heroes lately, at least none that come to mind. Exception being the doctors who risk their lives in war torn, government-less areas to save lives. And the heroes of 9/11.
Kids today have no one to idolize, no one of credibility to look up too. Lindsay Lohan as a hero?! Don’t think so.
While we move forward at warp speed, it would be nice for this bit of nostalgia to rise up and motivate us all to greatness.