In the spirit of catching up, I never linked to my last two Spot-on columns.
Back in February, I wrote a piece called “Days of Wine and Roses,” which was inspired by the fact that I knew a few people who really hated Amy Winehouse. Their dislike seemed to be focused on the fact that she not only had a substance abuse problem, but that she had a hit song (“Rehab“) all about the fact she wasn’t going to seek any treatment. These people seemed to miss the fact that her next single was called “You Know I’m No Good.”
So I set out to examine the question of when we ought to punish a celebrity for bad behavior and when we ought to not care what a famous person does in his or her their personal life. I was not able to come up with a conclusive answer.
Last week, I wrote a column on authenticity (“The Real Deal“). I’ve long felt this is an overrated aspect of popular culture. Whether it’s film, music or food, I’m always frustrated by one thing being celebrated for being authentic, while another thing is attacked for its lack of authenticity. Just because Rapper A means what he says, while Singer B is in it for the money; Rapper A is from the wrong side of the tracks and Singer B is from Beverly Hills; even though Rapper A attacks capitalism and racism, while Singer B’s songs are about going to the mall — none of this matters, in my book, if Rapper A is turgid and stale, while Singer B is bubbly and fresh. The feet will not be fooled (see comments in the previous post).
(On a related note, see the discussion in the comments section here on the authenticity of rock versus pop.)
I extended this argument to the current presidential campaign. I’m supporting Barack Obama and not Hillary Clinton, but that doesn’t mean I think he’s some paragon of virtue and she’s some ruthless, power-hungry liar. John McCain gets the authentic tag this round, the straight-talking candidate who always says what he means and means what he says. Malarkey. He’s no better or worse than any other politician and has a clear record of shifting with the tides and being calculating.
By the way, I have had people tell me that Obama has a secret agenda to somehow reward African Americans after he’s elected; how, exactly, is not explained. Therefore, I suppose, his moderation is not authentic and he is actually a radical, a Black Panther in disguise. Conversely, one sees idiotic things like this from Nora Ephron:
When she tells a big lie, like her recent Bosnia episode, I can lose hours trying to figure out why. I mean, why? Was it one of those things that she’d said so often that she’d come to believe it? Was it a story that had worked in the past so she thought she’d gotten away with it? Did she honestly think that no one would rat her out? Does she not understand that if you’re famous, there’s almost nothing you do that someone doesn’t have a picture of? I have no idea what the answer is to any of this because I’m not a liar and she is.
Crikey. I know people, and so do you, who can relate an incident from their lives and get the facts wildly wrong. They believe every word of it. Couples see the same event in ways that are totally reversed; somebody has to be wrong, but it’s so firm in their minds, they can see it all in rich detail, even if facts prove otherwise. I suspect this is what happened with Clinton. Give me a break: “I’m not a liar and she is.”
I don’t take anything Obama or any other politician says at face value. They may mean it, it may be a calculation, it may be a line written by their staff. Focusing on who is real and authentic is a fruitless exercise and not necessarily indicative of how a candidate might govern. Determining if a politician is authentic or a phony is a fool’s errand.
One Response
-
The Pop View Says:
One of the references I made in my essay was to the concept of “sentiment override.”
It reminds me of the work of Dr. John Gottman, whose studies of marital stability and divorce prediction was profiled in Malcolm Gladwell’s best-seller Blink. Gottman says in that book that people are typically in one of two states in a relationship. In “positive sentiment override,” positive emotion acts as a buffer. One spouse will do something potentially irritating and the other spouse will let it slide. In “negative sentiment override,” even a relatively neutral act is perceived as negative. In this state, Gottman says, “[if a] spouse does something positive, it’s a selfish person doing a positive thing.”
And this NY Times article talks about another way of saying the same thing:
Mr. Manjoo cites a study (a pdf is available here) by Robert P. Vallone, Lee Ross and Mark R. Lepper, psychologists at Stanford University, in 1985. That study measured perceptions of media bias relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. People who held strong opinions on the conflict going in were more apt to perceive bias in news accounts. Pro-Palestinian subjects saw a pro-Israel bias, and vice versa.
When “a reporter, editor, news network, or pundit mentions the other side’s arguments, it stings,” Mr. Manjoo writes. “Psychologists call this the ‘hostile media phenomenon,’ and it goes far in explaining how both Apple and PC folks can see the opposite bias in the same news story.”
In other words, when people get wound up, they see what they wanna see.