Monty Schwarzeneggar
Nowadays any farce pales in comparison to the garish
spectacle that passes as public life
October 22, 2003
The Iranian
Now that dust has settled on California's
recall phantasmagoria and the last of porn stars and failed child
actors and a plethora of other "colourful" candidates
have left the stage to that "man of the people", the
muscles from Vienna, is there anything left to say about the formerly
hottest news item in the land and now forgotten affair?
What
can be said when reality is already so farcical and over the top
as to leave imagination aghast and impotent? Few years ago
at an event at the Banf Film and Television festival, an interviewer
asked the British comic genius John Cleese why he had stopped writing
comedy.
Back in the fifties and sixties, began the calm and
poised creative force behind the anarchy of imagination that was
Monty Python, the world was perceived as essentially sane with
pockets of insanity. By exaggerating the insane aspects of
life, Python-like farce was an attempt at a sort of mass psychotherapy,
to cure the ills of the collective psyche through laughter so to
speak.
Nowadays though, the world is essentially insane and
any farce pales in comparison to the garish spectacle that passes
as public life.
Three ring circus or not, it could be argued that the recall election
was a triumph of democracy, a chance for any citizen to compete
for
the highest office in the biggest state in the Union.
Regardless
of what lays behind the forces that started the recall steamroller
in the first place - the millionaire senators, the out of state
political strategists - this was grass root power at work, certainly
superior to a system where a group of old fogies sit in a shadowy
chamber and "whet" a list of "suitable" candidates.
Still,
like many things in American life, the recall demonstrated a gap
between the rhetoric and the reality. The rhetoric states
that the representatives of the people must serve the interests
of the public and if they go astray, the people as the final arbiter
must have the right to take away their power. Also that it's
the right of every citizen to participate in the political life
and to seek office if he or she so desires.
And yet, when
closely observed, the machination behind the recall was the same
old game of money and power and at crunch time, at election night,
the choice narrowed down to Republican vs. Democrat, the laisse
fair anti tax rhetoric vs. populist policies (imagine Noah Cross
from "Chinatown" orchestrating the whole affair in
hope of getting his man in Sacramento).
Did anybody really
believe for a minute that the porn actress with the generous cleavage
or the physically stunted former TV star had a chance? Yes,
I agree and neither did they. There's bound to a have
been a rush to rent tapes of Mary Carey by droves of politically
engaged men and Gary Coleman may land a spot in yet another upcoming
cheesy reality show.
Nothing wrong with that; earning a buck
so long as you don't get caught is as American as apple
pie. Darryl Issa and friends pouring millions of dollars in
the recall machine had no illusion about grand democratic ideas. They
wanted Gray Davies out and their man in. It was a power grab,
plain and simple, regardless of track record of the soon to be
former governor of California.
Buried underneath the snickering
and one liners and all those wacky California jokes was a serious
discussion of California's ills and its causes, say for
instance Enron's role in the energy crisis that cost Californians
dearly; or an honest airing of California's dirty laundry
vise-a-vie alien workers, that hardly any menial work is done in
the golden state which doesn't involve a pair of illegal
alien hands.
At the end there was certainly an illusion of
the democratic process in action but I'm afraid the reality
failed to match the highbrow rhetoric. Nobody seemed to care
though. Everyone seemed to be in on the joke, from the media
to the politicians to the ordinary citizens. A good time was
had by all and the stage was set for the Terminator to blast into
the governor's mansion and say "hasta la vista" to all of
California's problems.
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