Something’s Wrong Somewhere: Pimps, Whores and the Glitterati Who Game The Global Empire

“Something’s wrong somewhere”–Clifford Odets (“Golden Boy,” 1937) “Something’s wrong somewhere”–William Saroyan (“My Heart’s in the Highlands,” 1939)

By Gary Corseri [print_link]

IT’S UNLIKELY that Michelle or Barack Obama have read or given much thought to American playwrights Clifford Odets and William Saroyan.  Both men found their soaring voices during the Great Depression—great grand-daddy of the “Great Recession.” (Frankly, I prefer to call it what it is, “Great Depression II.”)  Then, as now, it took gutsy artists to cut through the rich-slime world of Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers Hollywood fantasies, to announce that the Emperor and Empress were wearing nothing but their vanity.

Hey, what’s a lousy $375,000 these days?—chump-change for a little mom-daughter bonding.  Ask the unemployed oyster-shuckers on the Gulf Coast what it’s worth.  Ask Mr. and Mrs. Dispossessed American, losing their house to the bailed-out banks.

Just don’t ask the Clintons.  Apparently, they’ve no problem shucking between $3 and $5 million for daughter Chelsea’s wedding.  Remember when Hillary’s failed presidential bid ran up a huge debt?  The Dems boo-hooed: Help poor Hillary pay back her stiletto-heeled dupes!  Remember the Haiti earthquake of 6 months ago?  There was Bill and new pal, George Warmonger Bush, doing their soft-shoe routine in the rubble of Port-Au-Prince, holding out their hats for American kids to send their pennies to the starving kids of Haiti.

Last I heard, there’s still a lot of starving kids in Haiti, and a whole lot more of them in Iraq since the American invasion and occupation.  How many kids could $2,000,000 feed?

Moscow is choking, Pakistan is drowning, Gaza is withering, war clouds gather over Iran and Korea… dead zones in the oceans… but, rejoice!  Chelsea has married her investment banker!

Something’s wrong somewhere!

Nine years after 9/11, and no one has bothered to build scale models of the twin towers and shoot scale-model jets into them to show how such a free-fall collapse could or could not have occurred!  We’re lost in the spin machines, “science” and “truth” serve the state and money, and we can laugh with Bush over missing weapons of mass destruction—and missing limbs on Iraqi kids!

We have no context for the hurrying images of our post-modern, technological existence: merely a fading mythological memory of Herculean heroes—Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln—all of whom, on closer inspection, had feet of clay.  The long-sustaining, post-war vision of the future—the dream of a brave and independent people creating lives of fulfillment and security—recedes as we approach, and we find ourselves in a hell-hall of mirrors with nothing but distorted images of corrugated figures of “the working man,” “blue-collar,”  “professionals,” “progressives,” “conservatives,” “man,” “woman”—and looming over all, like gods, giants and the Biblical Nephilim—our “celebrities,” the Colossi of fame and fortune whom we love and fear and worship, for they possess the power of life and death.

But we have no literary sense of ourselves.  We do not see the great plays of the past acted on our wide-screen HDTVs, with their endless sports, killings, canned-laughter, packaged news and commentaries, unreality shows.  We have “Law and Order” re-runs and spin-offs to teach us of the dangers of our streets and our sole salvation in the surrendering of self to official—and, increasingly officious and intrusive—authority.  Mindless sitcoms demean life and trivialize the struggles of the “common folk” (actually, the majority).  We no longer know how to talk to one another, to hear the simple eloquence of truth and moral character.  We’re a nation of pretense—hollow men and women, parading like mannequins in the malls of our children’s nightmares.

I know that the past can acquire rosy hues.  I don’t bemoan any loss of the worst of it—the waste, ignorance and abuse.  But… what cataracts have we grown that we can’t even see through the glitterati who possess and oppress us now?

GARY CORSERIGary_Corseri@comcast.net.