Ronald Reagan and why I never want to hear another word about his dead ass

by anna at 07:47 PM on June 08, 2004

I'm pure as the driven slush. ---Tallila Bankhead

The golden age of American literature came in the 20s. You had such uber-wordsmiths as Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald plying their trades. These heavyweights were hardly the best of buds though. Faulkner dissed Hemingway, saying his simple-minded prose had never been known to send a reader to a dictionary. Hemingway retorted thusly: "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words and those are the ones I use." For good measure, he said, "Fitzgerald is so solemn about LITERATURE. He doesn't understand that all you need to do is do the best you can, and finish what you started." Catty!!

Perhaps the acme of American cinema came in the 50s with such gems as Rear Window, Vertigo, Blackboard Jungle, Some Like It Hot and On the Waterfront. Yet again, the players were hardly some big happy family. Drink-hurling feuds between Marilyn Monroe and fellow bombshell Jayne Mansfield were the stuff of legend. When asked what she liked best about being a star, Monroe said it was no longer having to suck casting directors' dicks to garner roles.

By far the most vibrant musical genre of the 90s was rap/hip-hop. Once again, we saw much acrimony. Eminem dissed his peers. Li'l Kim traded barbs with rival Foxy Brown and her posse later traded actual gunshots with Capone -N- Noereaga. Likewise, the east vs. west coast feuds culminated in two drive-by shootings of prominent rappers. When people started calling these assassinations, Chris Rock was heard to snort, "Those niggaz was shot."

It's the same in sports. Babe Ruth's Yankees, Michael Jordan's Bulls, Troy Aikman's Cowboys were all full of acrimony and misgivings among the teammates. More recently you have the sublime soap opera that is the LA Lakers. Yet these are among the most storied teams in history.

Comic Don Rickles forged an entire career from insulting his peers. What do we have today, the Insult Dog?

Similarly, few would dispute that the entertainment industry is in a steep and irreversible decline. A callous assembly lines churns out endless sequels to products nobody cared about in the first place. People turn away in droves. Why? Just turn on Entertainment Tonight or Access:Hollywood. There's Bruce Willis crowing about how he and gal pal Brooke Burns, ex-wife Demi Moore, their kids and her boy-toy gather for fun-filled skiiing junkets. Everybody is a creative genius they'd all love to work with again. Not an unkind word about their rivals ever passes their lips. Even though you know damn well competition is fevered for plum roles, contracts and recording deals. And that they couldn't care less about anyone but themselves.

Spite, malice, competition, controversy, not being a Team Player, Drama Queens, cattiness, revenge and harboring grudges are all concepts that have gotten a bum rap in today's squeaky-clean, goody-goody two shoes environment. But just as negative numbers have a place in math, negative emotions serve a useful purpose in human endeavor. Fact is, cohesion, consensus, commitment, cooperation and complacency are boring as hell.

To breath a last gasp of life into the moribund entertainment industry, I say we need less backslapping and more back-stabbing. Come to think of it, maybe we need more of that in our own lives too. Spices things up a bit.