Monday, March 07, 2011

The Bonfire of the Hypocrisies

(with apologies to Tom Wolfe)

Many a time in the recent past have I thought to myself that we are living in the world mocked in the 1987 movie "The Running Man" (adapted from a Stephen King novel, no less). We're not quite at the point where executions have become game shows, but judging by the standards of "reality" programming, we're arguably not far off.

Another argument that we live in a world gone completely mad is the sight of the American public piling onto Mr. Carlos Estevez, a.k.a. Charlie Sheen, for daring to be himself.

Writes Anthony Gregory (LRC):

There is something rotten in our mass culture. It is the stench of an establishment that pushes a flavor of social progressivism upon the country while reserving the right to burn social heretics at the stake on even the most hypocritical of pretenses.

And it is against this establishment’s witchhunt and all its nefarious social consequences that a defense must be waged. Most certainly, it can be argued that Sheen has not acted virtuously. But the attacks on him have clearly been more distasteful, more pathetic, more indicative of a society in decline, than his own behavior. For the crimes of drug use, sexual deviance, and political incorrectness, a great talent has been thrown under the bus by a drug addled, sexually deviant, socially insensitive, politically clueless mass media and liberal culture. They have eaten one of their own. It has happened many times before, to Robert Downey, Jr., Britney Spears, Tiger Woods, and now Christina Aguilera. And it will happen again. And if even the most handsomely paid actor on TV is helpless against the official pop culture’s hypocritical lynch mob, what hope do any of us little people have should the mob decide we too deserve to be lynched?


And check out Ilana Mercer's great write-ups on the subject, here and here.

Meanwhile, Bradley Manning is stripped naked by his captors, while the government tormenting him thus preaches "human rights" to the world.

O tempora o mores.

5 comments:

Mark Johnson said...

More fascinating is that Sheen has been shown as clean. Recently. I'm not so sure about the longer term.

Perhaps his earlier life has permanently addled his mind into 'winning'.

In recent news, I stopped eating potatoes. WINNING!

CubuCoko said...

All he ought to do is declare himself a Scientologist. Watch the lynch mob instantly shut up.

As for the potatoes - good for you! More red meat is the thing. Winning!

Anonymous said...

Sheen made the unforgivable error when speaking ill of his producer he used his real Jewish name Chaim Levine instead of his adopted name Chuck Lorre which seems to be the main gripe against him.

Oh my god! We can’t have that unless when it is Jewish columnists that brag about it less we think Jews either have near total control or are disproportionately represented in the US mass media.

CubuCoko said...

Gregory actually addresses that in the article. Sheen's mother is Jewish, so that explodes the anti-Semitism argument. Besides, when did it become a sin to call someone by his actual name?

Suvorov said...

I suspect that Sr. Estevez's real sin is in being a 9/11 truther, who sent a letter to Obama asking for a real investigation.
This whole campaign is of course also a distraction a la Anne Nicole.
After all, Bill Clitler was impeached for leaving a stain on Monica's skirt, not for killing thousands of innocent people around the world.
Btw, Emilio's father has always been a Jesuit coadjutor.