Saturday, April 26, 2003 :::
 
Weekend Edition...A Great Article on Tony Blair, and Some Recent Hits...

For those of you who have missed these highly rated (by, well, the vast readership which A Mind That Suits enjoys), here are some highlights...scroll down for the article on Blair...

How to Protect Yourself From Your Parents. This was the stunning headline on the front of the Personal Journal section of this morning's WSJ. It wasn't advice for kids whose moms slap them too hard. It was advice for financially independent adults whose parents need them. The advice offered was sound--plan ahead--but the tone smacks of the whiney '60's generation complaint that they are "the sandwich generation:" just as their kids grow up and leave home, their own parents begin to slow down and need some attention. This is viewed as an enormous burden by the Selfish Generation, which it is, but the rest of the world calls it "life."

The gander dishes sauce onto the goose. A Mind That Suits sees a lot of weddings. He has long since concluded that weddings are like old age: they amplify whatever is already there. Happy families have happy wedding parties, unhappy families turn them into yet one more battle in a protracted war.

The incredible wealth of most Americans has only made this more true. If you read the novels of Jane Austin, you will see that even in the heights of English society 200 years ago, the groom's family simply went over to the bride's family's house, they rode to the church together, and then they all came back for dinner. The nannies who raised the young couple probably went along. 25 guests tops.

No longer. Weddings get more and more elaborate, more and more complicated, thus having many more opportunities for serious fights among the female members of the bride's family, with the women on the groom's side occasionally joining in for fun. People in the wedding business are very good at coming up with new accessories essential for "the perfect wedding," and all too many women are willing to take the bait. The "wedding industry" now takes in $50 billion a year.

This has coincided with the growth of the notion that the purpose of life is "personal fulfillment," however one defines it, so one should scrap for every piece of territory you can. Carol Rogers was the psychologist who really crystallized the self-help philosophy into a handy weapon for terrorizing those around you. He even called one of his books Personal Power. So much for the simple sacrifices and compromises that make life together possible and truly fulfilling.

You can imagine what the weddings of two people into "personal power" can turn into.

You will have noticed the shift from the initial emphasis on women to the "two people." The indispensible Miss Manners, years ago, once told an anxious young groom that his only job was to show up, on time, properly dressed, as weddings were a female concern. A Mind That Suits even knows a younger man who married into real wealth. His only task was to say "I do" during a full weekend of activities involving 700 guests. (A Mind That Suits pauses to wonder, for the millionth time since meeting this man at another friend's much simpler wedding, how one can possibly know 700 people well enough to invite them to your wedding.)

Things are changing. The Journal had a lengthy article recently on how actively involved men are now getting in their own nuptials. Partly this is just a result of professionals marrying later and paying for their own weddings, but some of what was described clearly falls under the rubric of "personal power." One man wanted tulips when his bride wanted roses. Feelings ran high enough that they really fought over it and compromised on calla lillies, which are beautiful, but not what either of them really wanted in the first place. It may be a natural development, given the way we do things these days, but A Mind That Suits--who is not married--would like to suggest that this is not a good way to start off what is, by all accounts, the most important year of the marriage.

A Mind That Suits happens to know that calla lillies are more expensive than either roses or tulips. The wedding industry smells a doubling of profits, or at least a large increase, and is pouring gas on the flames by rushing in to give the groom ideas for things to demand. Make capitalism another thing that merely amplifies what is already there.

How Does This One Sit With the Vast Army of Francophiles who Love to Bash the US? An interesting column on today's Taste Page (WSJ) recounts a typically ham-handed effort by the French to control their Muslim population by controlling the mosques themselves. France famously tried to de-Christianize itself by similar tactics at the end of the 19th and early part of the 20th Centuries, and only the fact that their entire governing class goes to the same university hides the persistence of religious belief among the French themselves. One doubts that this effort will work, but it is worth reading about.

Wasn't this supposed to usher in a heavenly kingdom? Speaking of Haiti, remember 10 years ago, when "activists" maintained that deposed president Jean-Baptiste Aristide must be restored at all costs, otherwise it was proof that the US did not support human rights. Even then, there were many who said that he was a thug, but he had been properly elected and he had been illegally deposed, so Bill Clinton sent in the troops and put him back. Clinton went down for a love-in there with Aristide, and he was attacked by the entire intellectual class in that poor country. Aristide, it turns out, is little better than an elected Duvalier. Any chance for a free and open election to replace him is pretty much out of the question. Any apologies from the "human rights" community should be forwarded to A Mind That Suits.

Just how much trouble is our culture in? Howard Stern is suing Lorenzo Lamas. If you have forgotten Lorenzo Lamas, he was a deadly handsome regular on the 1980's prime time soap Falcon Crest, if memory serves. Looking about 3 minutes older, he is now a panelist on Are You Hot?, a contest for the best looking people in America. Make that, the best looking people in America who are willing to subject themselves to abuse. Lorenzo uses a laser pointer to highlight what he considers bodily defects. Howard Stern says he came up with it, and he is reportedly suing Lamas for $10 million. Man, are we in trouble.

Like father, like son. Speaking of Lorenzo Lamas, he rarely uses the pointer, which brings to mind his father. Fernando Lamas was an equally handsome young man with a brief career as the all-purpose himbo in American commedies in the 1960's and '70's. (My mother, who loved Latin looks, was a big fan, and he could actually get a punch line off, a feat that seems to escape Lorenzo.) By the time Billy Crystal immortalized Fernando with his brutal impersonation on Saturday Night Live in the early 1980's, he was largely forgotten, and Crystal's tagline---"Yooouuu....llllooook....mmmmarvellous"--became about the only thing anyone remembered about him. Judging by Lorenzo, Billy, with the simplicity of real genius, was not making fun of him; he was just copying him. I watched exactly one episode of the dreadful Are You Hot?, and Lorenzo began his brief conversation with every single contestant thusly: "Hey, what's up? Looking good." He even said that to the few people who get the laser treatment.

There's decline, and then there's decline. Are You Hot? is probably not itself a sign of decline. I spend a lot of time in Latin cultures, and Are You Hot could well be the main prime time show on any Latin network from Rome to Tierra del Fuego. Some of those cultures are doing fine, especially Italy, which has one of the world's best economies. And Latin people are pumping a tremendous amount of life into our economy. Being exuberantly happy about the way our benighted species propagates itself is not in and of itself decadent. But the show is brutally analytic: saying "looking good" to everybody is Latin, the laser pointer is very efiiciency-minded-"I'm-just-being-honest"-USA all the way. And Howard Stern is suing. Those are signs of decline.

Excellent Profile of Tony Blair. This morning's Financial Times has a superb profile of Tony Blair, who is the man that Bill Clinton might have been if he had any character, which is a big if. For some reason, the page for FT Weekend is not loading on my computer, so click on "Arts and Weekend" in the lefthand column.

See you Monday.A Mind That Suits is trying to be better about taking Sundays off, so there will be no posts tomorrow unless something big happens. Meanwhile, check out the related website on Christian spirituality The Fullness of Him, and otherwise have a great weekend.






::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 11:53 AM


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What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.