This past week hasn’t been easy for me physically. I think my springtime allergies trigger some icky muscle woes. I seem to recall my hip bursitis flaring up this time last year, or maybe it was 2007. And all week, every few minutes or so my left hamstring feels as if it’s just about to cramp; I will go a long way towards avoiding a hamstring cramp, possibly one of the most painful spasms I can imagine (especially when it suddenly wakes you up in bed and you’re lying there screaming until the excruciating pain dissipates and it’s never soon enough). So I wind up favoring one side and throwing out even more of my body alignment, and generally feeling worse.
But in the virtual and tee-vee world, a few things have made me feel a lot better about myself and other people in general. The first is, of course, the Susan Boyle phenomenon, which I watched yesterday when I got back from work. I identify a great deal with Boyle, certainly physically and age-wise, and to see the stick-figure people undergo such a teachable moment about their own prejudices was very viscerally satisfying.
Then I turned on the TV and caught a few minutes of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, starring the big black and strikingly beautiful Jill Scott, followed by a rerun of Tuesday’s Colbert report with guest Susie Orbach talking about the futility and nonsense of body hatred. And I grinned even more.
Of course, yesterday was also a good day for taking stock of Wednesday’s events, with the very welcome mockery on both MSNBC and Comedy Central of the various FOX-sponsored “tea party” rallies filled with racists protesting tax hikes that will only affect the super-rich, not getting their own taxes will be cut, even when blogger Sinfonian pretty much spelled out for them in Pensacola. And the coverage of the President’s educational press conference on Tuesday gave me even more hope. After eight years of the government actively trying to dumb down its citizens, it’s great to see the desire to be smart becoming cool again. Despite the droning on of old media, I’m convinced that more citizens than ever are taking self-education into their own hands.
Indications are that people are less and less willing to be duped. When Elle magazine features “Stars sans fards” (literally “without makeup” but with the alternate meaning of “openness”) and Photoshop Disasters ranks consistently among the most popular websites, that tells me that I’m not the only one sick to death of style-over-substance appearance and thinking. Perhaps Susan Boyle’s gorgeous voice will presage the end of the plastic American Idol types with their digitally-tuned vocals?
While the signs may be there, we humans love to create patterns out of the randomness, just to make ourselves feel better. Much of the reaction to Boyle felt staged (the signature Cowell smirk, the audience “spontaneously” jumping to their feet) and, even if it didn’t, it appeared to me to be some sort of orgy of self-congratulations. You know, “PC” in its original meaning of “look how enlightened we are, yay us!” Still, while this series of coincidences may not presage a permanent backlash against the fake morality and topsy-turvy excesses of the last 30 years, the hippie and fat-acceptance activist in me can’t help but applaud even this subjective-looking trend.
But in the virtual and tee-vee world, a few things have made me feel a lot better about myself and other people in general. The first is, of course, the Susan Boyle phenomenon, which I watched yesterday when I got back from work. I identify a great deal with Boyle, certainly physically and age-wise, and to see the stick-figure people undergo such a teachable moment about their own prejudices was very viscerally satisfying.
Then I turned on the TV and caught a few minutes of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, starring the big black and strikingly beautiful Jill Scott, followed by a rerun of Tuesday’s Colbert report with guest Susie Orbach talking about the futility and nonsense of body hatred. And I grinned even more.
Of course, yesterday was also a good day for taking stock of Wednesday’s events, with the very welcome mockery on both MSNBC and Comedy Central of the various FOX-sponsored “tea party” rallies filled with racists protesting tax hikes that will only affect the super-rich, not getting their own taxes will be cut, even when blogger Sinfonian pretty much spelled out for them in Pensacola. And the coverage of the President’s educational press conference on Tuesday gave me even more hope. After eight years of the government actively trying to dumb down its citizens, it’s great to see the desire to be smart becoming cool again. Despite the droning on of old media, I’m convinced that more citizens than ever are taking self-education into their own hands.
Indications are that people are less and less willing to be duped. When Elle magazine features “Stars sans fards” (literally “without makeup” but with the alternate meaning of “openness”) and Photoshop Disasters ranks consistently among the most popular websites, that tells me that I’m not the only one sick to death of style-over-substance appearance and thinking. Perhaps Susan Boyle’s gorgeous voice will presage the end of the plastic American Idol types with their digitally-tuned vocals?
While the signs may be there, we humans love to create patterns out of the randomness, just to make ourselves feel better. Much of the reaction to Boyle felt staged (the signature Cowell smirk, the audience “spontaneously” jumping to their feet) and, even if it didn’t, it appeared to me to be some sort of orgy of self-congratulations. You know, “PC” in its original meaning of “look how enlightened we are, yay us!” Still, while this series of coincidences may not presage a permanent backlash against the fake morality and topsy-turvy excesses of the last 30 years, the hippie and fat-acceptance activist in me can’t help but applaud even this subjective-looking trend.
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