Because You Never Asked

(This essay was written somewhere in the late '90's)

     I'm sure there are quite a few of you out there in essayland who are familiar with a film called "Casino".

     "Casino" came along when one more generic, wise guy, cigarette dangling Mafia movie was one too many. It failed as a first run movie at the mall's Cinema 10, but it seems to have found its natural habitat as a rerun on TV, where you are liable to run into it at any moment.

     Down through the years, I've seen enough 5 to 10 minute snippets to pretty much know the whole irrelevant-to-anyone's-life story. The two main thugs in the film are, quite predictably, Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci. The leading lady . leading lady? It's difficult to talk about "leading ladies" in such cinema output, because women are no more than window dressing for the grease balls kicking the crap out of each other, something like what a woman is reduced to on NFL Sunday. Perhaps it would be more fitting to say that the "principle broad" in "Casino" is Sharon Stone, who plays a remarkably bitchy slut's slut to such perfection, that one is tempted to believe she was not acting at all. The only thing somewhat surprising about this movie is that Al Pacino is not in it.

     In any event, there is one delightfully gruesome scene where Joe Pesci --- who is the greasiest, nastiest, most sadistic mafia prick of all a'da pricks --- gets clubbed to death in a corn field by a bunch of Sicilian Mark McGwires with baseball bats. (Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?). In "uhda woids", especially for the viewer at home waiting to get sleepy enough to go to bed, he got "whad 'e d'soived".

     The media recently tried to do the same thing to Jessie Ventura.

     Jessie Ventura, in spite of all his third party, outsider bluster, is no threat to the objective news swindlers at Fox-CNN, fabricating the world they want us to live in. He's a patriot, an American's American who finds mirthful joy in fighting "sand niggers" and "gooks" in defense of apple pie and mafia movies. Jessie, without even knowing it, is a useful idiot in the vast scheme of the status quo. He is the prototypical anybody who can rise up and be whatever . so forth and blah, blah, what a great democracy is America.

     But he recently broke an unwritten law of American politics, perhaps the most sacred Commandment of Yankee leadership, written or unwritten:

     He showed disdain for God and religion.

     Like a mafia "Don" who had just double-crossed a rival he had once hugged in agreement, Jessie had now become a target for the wrath of the power brokers. He was now on the "hit list". Up until then, he had been an acceptable odd ball, easily accommodated by Larry King or Bill O'Reilly. But the scumbag had gone too far. He needed to be rubbed out . with God's blessing.

     Any alien paying a reasonable amount of time to the images created by our media outlets would probably come to the conclusion that Americans do an awful lot of praying. Every time there is an earthquake; every time a beloved celebrity takes ill; every time a stockbroker shoots up the office, we are praying. The media doesn't ask us to pray, or suggest we are praying . no. It tells us we are praying. "Our prayers go out to so and so." "We'll all be praying for his quick recovery." "All we can do now is pray."

     I know very few people who pray, let alone these slick young mannequins giving us the news.

     Notwithstanding a significant segment of American society that are devout followers of their respective religions (although, as mentioned in the essay "More on Religion", their daily behavior is hardly shaped by their religions), I would say the majority (perhaps the vast majority) of American spiritual commitment falls into two well nourished groups: 1) those who claim some religious affiliation but show almost nothing in the way of practice, and 2) those who claim to be non-practicing, none believers. For the space alien familiarizing itself with our culture, the images seen on our media outlets would suggest something quite different, something bordering on religious devotion.

     I am not particularly fond of Jessie Ventura. A man whose past is forged primarily in the anti-intelligence of Pro Wrestling does not inspire great confidence as a serious leader of his people. But he does represent something worth noting in American politics: he's not "one of them". He's different. He is not a bought and sold lackey of the patricians. Politics is not his whole persona.

     This is good,

     because it means he can say things other politicians can't, things like "religion is for weak people", and other assorted anti-clerical barbs.

     He has broken the sacred Commandment and now they want his ass.

     Jessie's unflattering remarks about religion set of a predatory frenzy of contempt amongst the lords of news punditry, not to mention the talk show-Get Up America gossip mongers and the whole sordid cast of self righteous pontificates and shamans responsible for what passes as the flow of information in Oprahland. Their wrath was so harmoniously unanimous, one might think he had said something like "hey, if you have a beautiful daughter, why not try to get in her pants?" In reality, what he said was something close to what a significant amount of Americans actually believe! We are not talking about Manson-like cults or Jonestown-Korash fanatics. One listening to the media attacks on Jessie Ventura could easily overlook the fact that millions and millions of Americans neither attend any kind of church nor are religious believers.

     The flap over Ventura's religious remarks emphasizes a theme that pervades the whole body of this mass of dubious philosophical patter: the "news" industry supposedly looks out at the world and transmits the results to us . but it is really the other way around. We look at the "news", and they tell us who we are. They don't react to us; we react to them. They make the "news", not us.