GaGa over Kanye

I am having an Andy Rooney moment right now...

When I was in 9th grade, the most famous musician of my ear blew his head off with a shotgun, leaving his wife, child, band, and millions of devastated teenagers behind. I was so broken hearted that day that I lit a candle and left it burning as a vigil to my hero, Kurt (or Kurdt, or Curt...) Cobain. That week, the semi senile and snarky 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney laid down the law that Cobain was the most selfish S.O.B. that had ever walked the face of this earth. A man who had everything and still wallowed in self pity. I was so angry at him I could have exploded. But he was right.

We make gods out of people and then wonder why they raise the bar time and again. They do it to shock us, to impress us. We celebrate selfish indulgence and feral lifestyles and then when they manifest themselves as they did at the VMAs, at the SuperBowl a few years back, etc. we see what we have created and we are aghast.

The Enlightenment has added much to humanity, but has also left its share of casualties. Among them seem to be decency. People are so fiercely individualistic that they are simply out of their minds. That is why I have said and will continue to say that we idolize those whom we ought to institutionalize. I am only half serious here. But think about it. Who really wants to watch Snoop Dogg's wife get onto him for breaking his diet, or hear Ozzy and his kids drop F bombs like cluster bombs, or see an 80 year old man in his pajamas surrounded by sorority girls. Yet this is the world that we have created, and when it reaches critical mass we don't know what to do with it.

Think about Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick may be the greatest sitarist of our age. His films are brutal, offensive, and intentionally so. They give the people what they want in copious quantities. It would be comic if it were not so wicked. And I suppose I feel the same way about Lady GaGa, and her crew. If you want to watch someone simulate sex with a piano and smear blood over themselves (things which only Gwar could get away with five years ago) then that is your choice. The sad thing is that this sort of thing hardly even raises an eyebrow anymore. But someone out there (many someones apparently) want to see that.

This my friends is sad.