Technologically, as all of my fellow new car buyers
know, the American society has been evolving in leaps and bounds. Intellectually and morally, however, we seem
to be sprinting in place. At best.
We now are down to zero news outlets that are
respected by substantially all of the public – zero reporters, zero anchors,
zero newspapers, zero television networks.
Our society has become ideologically factionalized, and each faction has
separated prominent media outlets into one of two categories – (a) the
reputable, go-to sources and (b) the sources worthy of mockery and
ridicule. If a story is reported in the
first set of outlets, it is presumptively believed; if reported in the second
set of outlets, it is presumptively “fake news.” Notably, while we are divided as to which outlet
should be placed in which category, we are unified in this one respect: if we
learn about a report and we can’t say that it comes from a source that shares
our bias, we don’t trust it. Indeed, a
toxic mix of mistrust and cynicism has now become the pre-dominant American
ethos. To me, that is worthy of a Greek tragedy.
I was thinking about the above state of affairs this
past Monday night while watching the made-for-TV spectacle known as the Home
Run Derby. The Derby is played the night
before the Major League Baseball All-Star Game and involves eight of the top
home-run hitters in the game. In each
round of the competition, the brutes are given four minutes to bash as many
balls over the fence as possible, and if they hit at least two homers over 440
feet, they get 30 extra seconds to smash the horsehide. This year’s winner was Aaron Judge, a rookie
from a small town in California’s San Joaquin Valley, who seems to be an
all-around great player with a phenomenal ability to hit home runs (he already
has 30). Oh yeah, I almost forgot –this
freak is 6’7” and 282 pounds and his body seems perfectly proportioned. Plus, when he’s interviewed, he comes across
as perfectly nice and humble. In short,
this guy is right out of central casting: as in, “Cast me a kid who talks and
looks like Mickey Mantle, except that he is bigger and stronger – sort of a
humbler version of Babe Ruth, but an even better athlete. And make sure that like the Babe and the
Mick, he plays for the most iconic franchise in all of sports.” Commentators have compared Aaron Judge to a
comic strip superhero, and after watching him hit literally 3.9 miles worth of
home runs on Monday night (including four balls over 500 feet), I can now fully
appreciate the hype.
But here’s the thing. Superheroes are beloved by virtually everyone
other than arch villains and their minions.
And I’m not sure our society as a whole is willing to embrace anybody
these days. As discussed, we won’t embrace
a newsman. We certainly won’t embrace a
politician. And I don’t even think we’re
prepared to embrace an entertainer.
Such is the price of living in a culture where mistrust and cynicism
reign supreme.
Maybe Aaron Judge takes steroids. Or beats his girlfriend. Or
votes for the “wrong” party. Or drives drunk. Or maybe it’s just the old Stones lyric that “He
can’t be a man because he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me.” One way or another, we’ve become so cynical
about people that we refuse innocently to embrace those in our midst with the
greatest potential star power. Instead, we hold back our affection, convinced
that at some point these apparent “superheroes” will be revealed for what they
truly are – deeply flawed, and perhaps even more profoundly screwed up than the
rest of us. After all, doesn’t every “star”
eventually show up on the cover of the National Enquirer looking like a zombie
and acting like a pig?
Part of the problem is traceable to three of the domains
I mentioned above – our technology, our media, and our ideological divides. Today, it seems, pretty much everything is
captured on tape, and there’s always a media outlet to report it. Public figures can’t expect privacy. They’re always under a microscope. And how many human beings, let alone “superstars,”
can withstand microscopic scrutiny? Plus,
we now live in an ideological hot house, in which anyone with an opportunity to
affect the public political discourse is expected to do so, lest we start to
perceive them as vacuous or self-absorbed.
Then again, once they do announce themselves as people with actual
social and political agendas, a large swath of the country will turn on them
for being a troglodyte (i.e., a conservative) or a commie (i.e., a liberal).
I wonder if Michael Jordan would be so universally
beloved if he came on the scene today. Or
Kate Hepburn. Or Ben Franklin. Or even George Washington. Cynicism and mistrust are irresistible objects,
and I’m not sure we have any immovable forces to take them on.
But you never know.
Maybe Aaron Judge can prove me wrong.
That smiling Goliath effortlessly bashed baseballs and the competition
into oblivion, and yet when it was time for him to cash in (i.e., get
interviewed by an adoring TV commentator), he refused the interview unless he
was allowed to share the spotlight with his batting practice pitcher. Aw shucks America, this farm boy is
perfect. He’s begging us to let him – to let ANYONE –
into our collective hearts while we still have a chance. We’ve already decided we can’t all agree on
the need to protect our climate from destruction. Can we at least agree on the value of
celebrating a humble man-child from Linden, California?
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