I was in Boston this week and naturally could not avoid getting exposed to the Democratic Convention taking place in Denver. I was meaning to write about my impressions from this vacuous event, but after reading The Economist's correspondent's post on IntelligentLife.com about the American talent for "creating transparently pointless political rituals", I don't have much to add.
There is one other remarkable American talent I wonder about: the ability to stomach cheesiness and fake emotions without puking (or hurling some heavy object at the TV). Michelle Obama's address was a masterpiece of fake emotions; how can anyone possibly believe the her voice genuinely hang, every so precisely, during critical moments in her speech? And when Hillary Clinton got to the "No way! No How! No McCain!" part, the camera showed Bill smiling and shaking his head, as if amazed to hear this gem come out of his wife's mouth; how can anyone possibly believe he has not heard this before?
I keep asking myself whether most Americans believe this blatantly fake nonsense or if this entire charade is just a perpetuum mobile that nobody can stop.
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1 comment:
Thanks for saying what one would think would be wholly obvious to anyone of any intelligence or genuine human sincerity whatsoever. Unfortunately, here in the US, the pre-written, pre-analyzed, pre-opinion-polled vacuous marketing drivel mouthed by made-up faces is actually taken seriously and discussed at great length by public "intellectuals" on all sides.
Then again, this isn't much different from how people in various cultures recoil from similarly inane and meaningless stuff such as hearing the word "fuck", saying the word Yahweh, seeing someone not couch their genuine anger in euphemisms, etc. These are all rituals (not dissimilar from wearing clothes or not picking or noses in public) that various cultures accept and take seriously even though their actually not serious at all.
(Wow - cool segue on my part from self-congratulatory mocking of our intellectual inferiors to the even more arrogant aloof analysis of the entire species! Still a worthy observation methinks)
mnuez
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