Pearls Before Swine
_ Suicide Blondes from Marilyn to Britney. _
by Shelton Hull
On January 2, the angelic Britney Spears entered the “short-lived marriage fiasco” phase of a buddingly tragic matriculation. She went to Vegas, goes the story, with childhood friend Jason Allen Alexander (all three names, like all the great patsies of history), and got married after a night of what everyone does in Vegas who is still allowed back. The marriage was annulled two days later, two days too late to save her from another stupid spectacle that does nothing to put cash in her pocket.
It is somewhat out of character for me to express a sense of true fear and loathing of anything, really. Feelings obscure the truth, and human compassion is a rare card one gets to play in this world. But here I feel obliged to say that I think Britney Spears could be headed for catastrophe at some point down the line, in a way that might have last applied to Marilyn Monroe. Some people would think that’s a good thing; such people are the reason that the FCC can get away with forcing the American public to build their music diet from the auditory equivalent of genetically modified poison gas. Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera (whose hair has allegedly fallen out from lack of protein in her diet) have made a couple billion dollars for the have-dozen companies that run the music industry, but is it worth their souls?
Frank Sinatra could wipe the floor with any man who crab-walks in his shadow today– why? Because he paid attention to details and didn’t squander his stroke for every hack with a microphone or tape recorder seeking cheap heat at his expense. Today’s so-called “stars” and their flacks and flunkies don’t know a damn thing about their own idiom. They don’t understand the basic parasitism of pop culture, and what it can do to those who mark out for sparkle and cease to pay attention. Take for example Marilyn Monroe, who lasted about as long as America’s nuclear monopoly, and who too blazed a path of infamy before leaving a trail of cheap imitators behind.
Britney Spears is one of a handful of persons chosen to serve as the public face of an entertainment industry now in transition due to its own inherent insustainability. This isn’t conspiracy theory, this is a pretty obvious interpretation of the industries’ own numbers. If we take the lowest end of common estimates, Spears and Aguilera have sold 27 million albums worldwide; this would be about 5% of what their companies have sold in the relevant period. Add another 20 million from artists who clearly were imposed upon a template defined with these girls, multiply by $15 and add the revenue from MTV, Clear Channel, the clothing and makeup companies of choice, and one begins to see why a “joke” marriage screws hard with the projections.
People probably lost their jobs when Spears’ virginal sheen was smudged by the deliberate effort of Fred Durst, Justin Timberlake, Howard Stern and the companies that own them, and now there’s no returning to the dance with them what brung ya. Even Mr. Alexander, who did get at least one night of his honeymoon, could not resist the urge to talk to cameras about his taste of heaven before being publicly repudiated as a man by his bride’s employers, (yes) Jive Records. They should all feel the bastinado.
Even Eddie Fisher got off better, he being smarter than the average bore. He did what 50 million American men wanted to do, twice, and he kept his mouth shut until he was an old man. His reward was the eternal envy and respect of a generation that will never breathe such rarefied air or taste such flesh again, because pop culture destroys everything it touches today.
It’s possible that Britney’s “joke that went too far” was a cry for help like Mariah Carey’s public breakdown three years ago. That would explain why she’s not been seen in public since the scandal broke. This girl is being put through a meat-grinder as surely as Jesus walked this earth, and it’s being done to sell a sucker-trap. It’s not cute, it’s not funny, and I have no intention of letting it pass without comment. This web of collusion between certain broadcasters, the FCC and the RIAA must be dismantled while there is still time to save this country. Either there is a global jihad being waged against us, or there is not. We can’t have it both ways– not anymore.
