When Blowing up the White House is a ‘Metaphor’
Recently at the ‘Women’s March’ on Washington, pop star Madonna claimed that she has “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.” After astonishingly subdued outrage from the media, she claimed it was a metaphor. But a metaphor is a literary device and Madonna is no Keats, Plath or Hemingway. To claim that her liberal, elitist rage is akin to any figure of speech is an insult to generations of writers. And then there was Ashley Judd’s painful recitation of “Nasty Woman” a shockingly bad poem written by a teen poet complete with Cheetos and Pokémon imagery – more metaphor I suppose? No wonder Hollywood is embroiled in a lost era of remakes.
Those of us in the business of choosing our words carefully cringe when headline seeking hacks hijack poetry and literary techniques to espouse hatred and violence. These are the Frankenstein monsters of the expressive world --- the trained monkeys of well-intentioned wordsmiths who toil their entire lives to make someone else famous. I kick myself for all those years that I believed that the stars of the silver screen and the Billboard charts were in it for the art. They weren’t. They simply lay in wait for a captive audience upon which to spew political drivel wholly unrelated to their body of work. They belly up to microphones at rallies and award shows to unload on the unsuspecting ‘fans’ that unwittingly catapulted them to fame. The ‘average Jane’ who was enchanted by a scene in a film or a lyric in a song that brought her back to high school or got her through tough times --- deserves far better.
It is truly an abuse of power, not political power but iconic power delivered by everyday folks for whom a night at the movies is a rare treat and pay-per-view an added expense to their monthly budget. It’s unfortunate that “celebrity” often befalls those who are poor stewards of fame. And, to make matters worse, there is no prerequisite for aptitude. I live in La La Land and trust me, there are freeways full of talent that exceeds so many of the screaming, ungracious, and churlish Hollywood memies.
So this march both confused and disappointed me. After the first “FU” sign and the image of the President as a pile of feces, I knew that there was no real cause. You lost me with the “Grab This” and the “Hate That” and the “Not My President” rants. It’s ironic that so many of these self-anointed fema-militants called the first woman to take a presidential candidate to the Oval Office, a host of appalling names --- the mildest of which include “crack head” and a “ho.” The rants continued on Facebook, the new ground zero of the left-wing ‘Crying Game.’ Imagine --- women demeaning other women in repulsive tirades from their work computers. Ironically, a few are employed by some of the most respected companies in the world, and I can only hope that their Public Relations folks find their way to those Facebook feeds.
It is -- in an odd way, poetry in motion and precisely why all those states flipped for the Republicans and Donald Trump. Congratulations! You’ve proven every derogatory point ever made about you. You have embraced your own cliché. You are your own window-smashing, profanity-laced stereotype. Now before you fire off some disjointed and irrational retort, remember that you’ve spent eight years screaming that hate, intolerance and name calling are indefensible.
We’re told that some 3 million women ‘marched’ in various cities across the country --- so imagine this. We can assume that each spent at least $20 on a train, a bus, a latte, magic markers or one of those pink, knit hats. What if every marcher had instead (or in addition to) sent $20 to cure breast cancer, or to help battered women, or to fund sick children? Do you know we would have amassed some $60,000,000 to help save women’s lives? We could have paid for some 800,000 breast screenings for the underprivileged or some 480,000 pap smears for the uninsured or made tens of thousands of dreams come true for little girls with cancer.
So this march was not really about women, was it? It was about bitterness and fanaticism. If any of these antics unfolded a day or two into President Obama’s tenure, there would have been Civil War. I am still convinced that we could be headed in that direction --- the only thing that may save us is the truly tolerant REST OF THE COUNTRY that watched your hate walk and somehow remained optimistic.
As you continue to whip yourselves up into a frenzy, fueled by your own disgruntlement --- consider a true metaphor courtesy of Shakespeare. It is about art imitating life and life imitating art and where we all stand at the end of the day. Upon learning that his wife is dead, MacBeth tells us …
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
—“MacBeth” by William Shakespeare
