It's easy to be a curmudgeon, a complainer, a whiner, to live in a world where everything is horrible, and niceties are the stuff of wimps. You disagree? Then how does one explain Glenn Beck and Andy Cohen?
Beck, the Fox News darling who spends his time attacking anything progressive, decided to take on Detroit, berating the city as being worse than Hiroshima after the atomic bomb. Cohen, the senior vice president of original programming and development at Bravo, decided to make cultural points by directing smarmy comments at the fifth grade students from Public School 22 on Staten Island.
That Beck would attack Detroit is no surprise. Whenever national conservative commentators have nothing of worth to say they trot out Detroit or some other Midwestern city, usually one led by an African-American, for ridicule and scorn. But for Cohen to denigrate a bunch of school children who were invited to sing "Over the Rainbow" at the end of the Oscar telecast is just cheap even for someone who is a master of cheap programming.
Cohen's comments came on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show. The host, Willie Geist, asked Cohen what was his "lowlight of the night" Sunday. Cohen quickly turned to the kids from Staten Island, saying their appearance was inappropriate for the Oscars. Wrong time, wrong place, Cohen lamented.
While the song and the student's performance were schlocky at best, a sentimental tug at the heart, they were what Hollywood is. Criticizing little children for singing at an Oscar's telecast is even low for him. I'm quite sure that other people can pick even greater "lowlights": the virtual Bob Hope; Billy Crystal; the boring speeches; the tacky dance scenes; the contrived music video using clips from the Best Picture nominees; the telecast itself. Any of those could have easily been cited as lowlights.
Not for Cohen, though. Instead, he decided that the performance of 10 and 11 year olds were the lowest lowlight of the evening. Why? What was the point of lambasting the children's appearance? What is gained by doing so?
The same can be said of Beck. Detroit is always the subject of ridicule, so much so that the comments have become old hat. Yes, Chrysler and General Motors were insular and poorly run companies that got bailouts. Yet, neither created the financial meltdown that sent America spiraling into an economic abyss. Many of the people who were at the forefront of that disaster continue to operate on Wall Street after receiving bailouts, and are quickly trying to return to their old habits.
Yet, there is little criticism of those entities. Attacking Detroit allows one to attack unions and the American auto industry, both of which have been convenient whipping boys. Too attack children is to say one is above sentimentality. Neither adds to the dialogue that needs to exist in this country.
Both, of course, are easy to do when you have nothing of worth to say and a lot of time in which to say it. Apparently being nasty and appealing to the worst within us is the most favorable fashion trend, the new macho look for America.
1 comment:
Amen. Andy Cohen's observations about the children of PS 22 is just plain wrong. They were far and away the most authentic and inspiring act to have graced the stage at the Academy Awards, Sunday evening. The rest of the show was a complete and total bore.
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