At the Feet of Cultural Icons

Bob Dylan is coming under some fire for kowtowing to the Chinese Government; they wanted him not to sing two of his songs and he has nothing to say about their persecution of  Ai Weiwei, an artist who has political views. Some writers say that Dylan had no particular political views himself... ever, and they go on to document this.

I do not really care much. I never worshipped "Dylan". I would have rather listened to Leonard Cohen myself.
And now that the Grand National has come - and disastrously gone... two horses dead - and National Velvet being shown on the cable o'er and o'er, I notice that I do not really like Elizabeth Taylor as an actress. After her passing, God rest her soul, Cleopatra was played over and over. I had never seen the movie before, just bits and pieces.
Well, I watched it. It was terrible. And Elizabeth Taylor, I am sad to say, seemed to be acting more as if she were in the Bronx rather than Alexandria. All she needed was some gum to chew. However, there were some good films. I do not care for them, and that is a matter of taste.

I found myself thinking the other day, you know, the only thing I like her in is Gone With The Wind. It took me a few seconds to correct the mental archives, but I was mixing her up with Scarlett Leigh, not Butterfly McDaniels....
You know what I mean, at least, I hope you do.

There are a number of Icons I have no use for. There are many entities prancing on "Dancing With the Stars" that are featureless mimes as far as I'm concerned. Except that fellow who went down like a skyscraper in a 9.0 Richter-quake under the demands of Kirstie Alley; that fellow was a real gentleman and he kept insisting that he had had a muscle spasm in interviews too many to count with leering and smirking TV types ( and this is the first time I ever saw George Stephanopoulos smirk )...
I saw the video. Even young knees have their limits.

It did not take much to fed the maw of Entertainment 100 years ago. Now it is another matter. Warhol's 15 minutes of fame is based on the murderous demands of Entertainment and its need for Celebrities which populate its innumerable Myths.
We do create our own reality.
We need characters to put on all those empty pages.
We are essentially witless and need the Entertainment Industry to do it.

I was at the Detroit Symphony yesterday. They had recently come off a six month strike and we, the classical music desperados, were...  well, we were desperate. It was a free concert and we fought in the streets for tickets.
This was the concert I decided to scalp tickets to. Since the tickets were free, I had to essentially make them "more free". More desirable. I was offering my services as a butler for a week, like in Seinfeld, but there were no takers.
At the intermission, just before Dvorak's New World Symphony, fifty percent of the heads in the auditorium were bowed in the dull blue light of iPhones or iPads as people strove to be just like Fahrenheit 451 and amend their electronic families and worlds by little ePrayers and eDevotions. On the other hand, if they did not have those devices, you might be forced to speak to them. Each course has some real downsides.