WHO’S THE FARRAHEST OF THEM ALL?

6/25/09

In today’s news, the Supreme Court hands down a rather important privacy ruling. Mohsen Razaie, one of the opposition candidates in Iran decides to concede and the mullahs continued their crackdown on dissent, which appears to be growing more successful in tamping down resistance to the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A scheduled Paris meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and chief U.S. Mideast diplomat George Mitchell is cancelled, apparently over the settlement issue. Congressman Darrell Issa does not back down from his contention that Fed Chairman Bernanke engaged in a coverup regarding the muscling of Ken Lewis to proceed with the ill-advised purchase of Merrill Lynch. And South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, in what a former Palmetto State GOP Chairman so aptly described as “the damndest thing I’d ever seen” provides more evidence of the childish narcissism and overriding solipsism that is endemic to almost all of our public servants but lately seems especially prevalent in the GOP.

So what is the lead story on today’s (i.e., Thursday, 6/25’s) CBS radio news at noon? The death of Farrah Fawcett.

I have never seen Ms. Fawcett act in anything; I’ve never seen an episode of “Charlie’s Angels” and did not see “The Burning Bed.” My life is doubtless richer for the time I did not squander on such moronic fare. I am perhaps the only male who attended college in the late ‘70s who did not have a picture of Ms. Fawcett on my dorm room wall, probably because I went to the University of Illinois, where most of the women were far better looking than the extremely comely Farrah Fawcett. (And you thought it was the relatively cheap tuition that made everyone want to go to the Big U!) So I know very little of Ms. Fawcett other than what she looked like, and, again, she was quite impressive in that area. All that having been said, she did, from what little I know, appear to be a good person and conducted an epic, brave, graceful, and dignified struggle with her cancer. She deserves our prayers and respect, as do her family and friends.

So this post is by no means an attack on Farrah Fawcett, but rather on a society that is obsessed with fluff and nearly completely oblivious to substance but continually insists on its utter greatness, as if such greatness were achieved through some form of osmosis, or through the waves emanating from a television set. The next time you hear some blowhard, completely ignorant of history, among other things, insist that America’s best days are ahead of it, just remember the kind of mental cotton candy the American people think is worthy of “lead story” status.