History, as you know, is essentially “his story”, allowing winners to put their spin on things remembered. Digging deeper, and hearing the other side’s tale of the experience, a different perspective can be gained, in this world of a zillion strangers. But who does that, or needs to? Dumb and dumber America less and less, mainly because of less need to do so. In the capitalism game, the idea is not so much as to creatively survive, but to win, or to be on the side that’s winning.
And you see it again and again, such that now you can call it its own phenomenon, the purely American character destruction called “Americanization”. The inspiration for this essay is a patron saint, and a social martyr of a sort, and a woman I’d never seen or heard of until she was Americanized, Paula Deen. For this phenomenon, all the key features are there in this particular case, a creature of beauty for pitiful America to behold, and then de-hold.
Dorky, clumsy, and socially awkward is often the profile that allows salt of the earth folk to achieve almost unreal success in The American Way. Through being so purely productive as to in fact embody what we want and need out of everyone, which is simply to be productive, that elevator goes all the way to the top. Ms. Deen, now there, perhaps did not know there was a target on her back. All she needed to do was find a stairway, and there are plenty of people there to push her down it.
Her offense was classic. Unwittingly and absolutely without malice, for people like her (rich and successful) all it takes is exactly one ramble or gaffe in one of America’s charlatanized strugglers (minority, identity challenged, victim, loser), and the avalanche is swift, immediate, overwhelming, and ruinous.
Let’s meet the team. Now again, you have to be significant enough for the industries to profit on your destruction, like, an empire of sorts. Someone or something who has made millions and gained notoriety. But the team is formidable, and they play together so well. First it’s the advertisers. Now that there is the big fall, they risk being dragged down with it. So they, and their dollars, are the first out your window, and their abandoning of you is a winning strategy for them, as they divorce themselves from whatever egregiosity you have been culturally indicted for. So there goes the revenue. Then there is the media, and I would never be one to criticize them or what they do. But they are generally simple people who know, and learned in school, that the pen is mightier than the sword. And God-forbid it’s a slow news period, because you are now the news, Ms. Deen. The twists, true and not, add implication to what you have allegedly done or said. And since media was created to not only report that the world is going to hell in a breadbasket, you are now their affirmation, er, re-affirmation.
Meet next the legal team. Their ability to whack you with a legal interpretation will now re-direct that money of yours into their pocket. When the constitution outlawed torture, in later invented tort-your. Little, people, they, with their hand on the choker.
Next, meet the self-minded pseudo sufferers. The Terri Schiavo syndrome. They need so badly to be hurt and heard from, they will now feel your victim’s pain, and as the bottomless pit that it is, there will be no climbing down from this tree. They just might carry a sign outside for months or years. Until even pop stars are singing and crying along. It’s good for their business too. All American squad, all for you.
Hope you’re enjoying the punch, now that you’ve become the punch line. Most of us would never have known this woman, and have forgotten her already. But still, we were party in attendance of a terrible and profoundly unfair fall that is merely a snapshot of what we’ve become: pitiful gawkers. So eternally frightened by a sky said to be falling, so desensitized to the evil and disasters of our mist, now vicariously absorbing energy for the technical knockout of the favorite, winner of so many bouts.
If pockets are deep, hands can’t stay out of them. The hands of capitalism. There is money in tearing down, or at least into, any successful American venture. The slightest slipup, and the response is automatic. Sticks and stones still break bones, but it used to be that words would never hurt you. It’s just the modern industry of communication and media, and sales of products that support them. And since we’re all in sales, Americanization needs only to sell you on the idea that missteps by successful compatriots be gaudy enough for the gawky, but potentially gruesome enough for the North American favorite, shock and awesome. And now a word from our sponsors.
How about a few more examples. Remember Jimmy The Greek? Ubiquitous guy, unique feel for winners of sport, says one off the cuff remark and became almost instantly Americanized. He was Greek American back when ethnicity was real and cool, and then never more American. And never seen again.
Joe Paterno. Could he have stopped a crime by destroying his close friend? What percentage of people would? But when the hammer fell, the retributionists stopped just short of digging the old man up and cutting his balls off. Gaining the moral high ground on a legend of society can only be done through proper ministration of capitalism, the American way. The shoot off the pedestal way. The great fall of an icon for everyone’s apparent benefit way.
Entertainers become Americanized on regular occasion. Slip up and out of line, and industry after industry will be happy to chime in. Talk shows now have a topic for today, and tomorrow they’ll need another one. Unless the sky really does fall, which is still a rare event. And now with social media, loud farts are viral in minutes, whether they smell or not. And while the Twitterverse cannot usually wax olfactorily, Americans have a good sense of imagination for these short-lived events, long as they have the right dynamic otherwise, which is embarrassment and exposure.
The NFL has become Americanized. Remember, unless you have success and money, there is no need for this predatory behavior of the pitiful. Breast cancer awareness, during a football game? I thought that’s when we weren’t to be reminded of the awful realities of life. Are you really having these guys wear pink? What will be your fee if they decide not to, public tears? A chemo strike? Domestic violence is the now the league’s issue? That noise you hear is nothing more than the sound of money changing pockets.
In my career I have witnessed an awful Americanization of the medical profession, to its great detriment. Health “care” became immensely successful for all the right reasons: it began with “care” by the people who really cared, like religious institutions and nuns and all that. It attracted the best minds of society, because that’s what it takes to do the job at all. It was based in science, and its value in dollars cannot be argued with, given the fact that well-being of loved ones is at stake.
But you cannot count the entities trying to suck life out of the thing. Start with lawyers, and Gasp!. Criminal Americanization, nothing less. Regulators and accreditors: the idiocy of nuance, making the job harder just for the hell of it, and to justify their job description. Insurance and money people. A hefty scoop right off the top, driven by the fear of maybe. And very large buildings to count all the money. Carrying these burdens is part and parcel of an American way that, more than anything, affords to do so. On the backs of that guy in the mirror. And more and more, that gal. Feel me bruh?
Actions used to speak louder than words, before there is so much money in words. Now the word is the action, the slight nudge that tips that first domino. And then it’s over we go, clappity clap on to the next one, where a greater fall and more of a thud will again thrill us with this simple, distant, world-away stumble on their way to and fro, the American way.