The Unbearable Power of Stupid

Stupid is a great force in human affairs.

— P. J. O'Rourke

Human history is rife with stupid. 

Stupid's sway is sometimes unbearable.

In warfare, medicine, governance, engineering and product design, stupid can be tragic; but in big business the sway of stupid can be the stuff of comedy, as these four Hollywood tales make clear:

Too slow

In 1939, Eddie Mannix, an executive at MGM, insisted "Somewhere over the Rainbow" slowed the opening of The Wizard of Oz and offered a brilliant idea during the edit: cut the song. But the film's two producers threatened to quit, if the three-minute song were removed, and Mannix relented.

"Somewhere Over the Rainbow" won that year's Oscar for best original song and became Judy Garland's signature tune.

Too long

In 1961, Martin Rankin, an executive at Paramount, insisted Breakfast at Tiffany's was running too long during the edit, and offered a brilliant idea: cut "Moon River." But the director, actor, and composers objected so strenuously, Rankin relented.

The two-and-one-half minute "Moon River" earned the composers the Oscar for best original song that year and ranks today as Number 4 in the American Film Institute's list of top film songs.

Too weird

In 1985, a cadre of Columbia executives signed a 35-page memo insisting the title of director Joel Schumacher's new film was weird, and offered a brilliant idea: change St. Elmo's Fire to The Real World. Schumacher, uncertain he'd win his way, in turn instructed the film's composers to omit from the theme song's lyrics any reference to the movie's title. But the composers ignored him.

"I thought the title fit in the song," lyricist John Parr said. "In the movie, St. Elmo's is a bar. But to me St. Elmo's Fire is a magical thing glowing in the sky that holds destiny to someone. It's mystical and sacred. It's where paradise lies, like the end of the rainbow."

"St. Elmo's Fire" hit Number 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 Chart after the film's release, and remains a favorite 35 years later.

Too boring

In 1989, Disney chairman Jeffery Katzenberg insisted the three-minute ballad "Part of Your World" was "boring," and offered a brilliant idea: cut the song from The Little Mermaid. But Katzenberg relented when the two directors, the lyricist, and the animator hit the ceiling.

"Part of Your World" is today considered a classic Disney tune and the film's hallmark song. It's also thought to have inaugurated the "Disney Renaissance" and Disney's "Broadway Age."

P. J. O'Rourke is right.

Stupid is indeed a great force—maybe the greatest—in human affairs.

Decade

Goodly is 10 years old.

What began as a meager stab at search engine optimization a decade ago has become a vocation—you might say, a compulsion—of mine.

With nearly 400 thousand readers, Goodly no longer serves as a device for driving website traffic, but as a way of shouting, Hey, I'm still here.

I recently launched Blog, a new venture that's going to consume my time if it's to succeed—as, I hope, it will.

Meanwhile, God willing, Goodly will continue, pandemic or no, recession or no, civil war or no, global warming or no. 

I'm still here.

The Pleasure of Hating

Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference and disgust; hatred alone is immortal.

— William Hazlitt

The genteel among us can't help but see vigilantes as living symbols of Hate. But we don't always call them for what they are: sadists.

Americans didn't invent Hate; it's bred in our bones.

Wracked by civil wars, the Ancient Greeks understood Hate to represent Love's equally passionate opposite—and a source of tremendous pleasure to men who nurse it within.

But it took another 2,500 years for anyone in the West to realize how Hate is baked into our species.

Sigmund Freud—borrowing a theory from his disciple Sabina Spielrein—called Love the "self-preservative instinct" and Hate the drive that compels us to "lead organic life back into the inanimate state." 

In other words, Hate manifests our species' self-destructive "death instinct."

When I see vigilantes, I think of Freud, grappling as he was with the horrors of World War I. And I see vigilantes' conspicuous Hate—their vivid displays of anger and aggression—as open expressions of a narcissistic neurosis; as the "dark side of love" on parade for all to watch.

Their conspicuous kind of Hate—Hate, American Style—reveals that Americans crave discord, division, destruction, and death.

It shows Americans love to hate.

Can a second civil war be far away?

Rich People

Rich people in cars never look at people on the street. Poor ones always do.

― Lucia Berlin

 

The rich can't empathize, according to a new study appearing in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Researchers at New York University and the University of California, Irvine asked subjects from various economic classes to examine photos of other people and describe the others' emotional states. The poor scored much higher than the rich in the test.

The researchers concluded that, while poor folks can read others' emotions accurately, the rich lack empathy. 

"Lower-class individuals—owing to their greater levels of cultural interdependence—may appraise other human beings as more relevant to their goals and well-being than do higher-class individuals,” the researchers wrote. 

In other words, the rich have little use for the poor—so objectify them—while the poor folks are "people who need people."

Another new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that the rich often deny class privilege "by increasing their claims of personal hardships and hard work." 

The rich "cover privilege in a veneer of meritocracy,” the researchers wrote, because "evidence of privilege threatens recipients’ self-regard by calling into question whether they deserve their successes."

Gasbagging

The fewer the words, the truer the words.

— Robert Brault

Logorrhea, the gasbag's debility, eventually becomes our affliction as well.

That's because, through his torrent of words, the gasbag seeks to divert us from the inconvenient truth.

We often hear, in regard to politicians, talk about gaslighting; we hear much less about gasbagging.

Gasbagging—bloviating to distract and cover up—has become the weapon of choice for many politicos, especially ones on the right. Personally speaking, I can't stomach the tactic. I associate it with bullies and con men.

George Orwell warned against gasbagging in his essay Politics and the English Language. 

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity," Orwell said. 

When confronted by an inconvenient truth, the insincere gasbag—then deny they're "playing politics" when that's precisely what they're doing.

"In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics,’" Orwell says. "All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia."

"The fewer the words, the better the prayer," Martin Luther said. I like that formula.

So, let us pray: 

Lord, make them SHUT UP.

Amen.