Mission Accomplished

Former Majority Leader Tom DeLay to Join 'Dancing With the Stars' -- Fox News headline, August 17, 2009

The fusion of the celebrity culture, the political culture, and the media complex, long worked toward, is now complete. There is no point in debating the "public option," the war in Afghanistan, etc., because none of it means anything anymore; it's all bread and circuses from here on out.

My brother has commented shrewdly on the emergence of a "new genre" of person, exemplified by Rod and Patty Blagojevich, Nadya Suleman, Glenn Beck, Jon and Kate Gosselin, and Sarah Palin: whackos who "act out" in public with absolutely no sense of shame, and who get paid big sums to do it, because our appetite for the outrageous is insatiable. We just buried their forerunner and patron saint, Michael Jackson; the only key difference being that he actually had some talent to begin with. Now we have reached the point when those who, for better or for worse, are known for other, more important accomplishments -- the DeLays of the world -- want to join this cadre of nutjobs.

It is just sad that the dreams of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton should have come to grief on the shoal of reality television. But the wreckage is visible for all to see.