By Myles Ludwig
What does one do when reality isn’t enough? To paraphrase Socrates, is the unaugmented life worth living?
These are troubling times in the kingdom, sayeth both Shakespeare and the Progressive Insurance lady, a fast-moving time of delusions and illusions for even the smarmiest among us, not to mention trivia fans and popular culture pundits. The snowy pixels of reality got a good enough shaking in their globe to bring on a molecular blizzard.
I had intended to write about the Algerian hostage debacle and ponder on how it was compounded by delusional Western leaders who seemed to have tragically misplaced their strategic culture glasses. “Jeez Louise,” as my friend Stephanie always says. Even a quick peek into the wiki-world would have provided clues enough to Algerian culture and their foundational mythology, combined with their nuke- ’em- all Russian military training based on the 16th-century tactics of Ivan the Terrible, clues enough to know nothing would stop them from firing on all cylinders.
But what’s the loss of a few lives in this scanned and photoshopped universe compared to the death of ventriloquism? Compared to the emergence of not one, but two, competing American Mother Confessors, a phony Chavez photo and signature (making him the only near-death democratically elected dictator to be in two places at the same time), the French parachuting into Mali to bail out their former African colonies ― and, to top it off, back in the news was the Ocala fellow who’d once been arrested for diddling his miniature donkey, Doddle, because animals are “100 percent honest,” compared to humans who “stab you in the back, give you diseases, lie to you.”
Apparently enough is not quite enough, despite Lance Armstrong’s assessment.
It seems fitting the first public scandal of the second Obama administration (which is in keeping with the tradition of the historic scandals of second-term presidencies, e.g. Reagan, Nixon, Clinton, Bush) was an airbrushed Beyoncé lip-synching the national anthem, thus officially ushering in the New Age of Fakery and saying hasta la vista to the era of Señor Wences. To be or not too Bey, as Shakespeare might have asked, but not with a straight face. Apparently, it was not to Bey. It was Memorex. Even the U.S. Marine Band was faking it.
“How dumb do you think they felt?” mused Nancy Snyderman on the Today show. Pretty dumb, according to Marine Capt. Gregory Wolf, as “no one in the Marine Band is in a position to assess whether it was live or pre-recorded.” Lucky for us, the band is not in combat mode.
And what about all those tone-deaf politicians on the dais who didn’t crack a smile and kept the state secret? My concern is that Bush 41’s famous lesson to read his lips is turning out to be prophetic. Can we expect the O-Man to do his own talking or will he be looped and AutoTuned? I think we can rely on VP Joe Biden to do his own talking, as he rarely says the same thing twice.
The revelation that Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman finger-synched it and the possibility that the late Whitney Houston was actually a hologram at her Super Bowl performance doesn’t excuse the ruse. R.I. P., Milli Vanilli.
Are we really witnessing the triumph of the simulacrum? Will Potemkin Isles be the next luxury gated community in Boca Raton?
Appears nothing is safe from augmented reality.
Certainly not Lance “Augment Me” Armstrong. He used to be considered “dope” in cycle racing circles, but now we know he really is a dope for sticking to his delusions. He angled for another shot at sneakerfame by crying crocodile tears on the commodious lap of America’s premier Mother Confessor, the beatifically inclined Oprah, but I was disappointed she didn’t take him over her knee and give him the good spanking he deserves. Methinks his protestation, “I didn’t call her fat,” was eerily reminiscent of Nixon’s “I am not a crook.”
Never one to be out-sainted (or “out-Christened” in the immortal words of George Various Middle Initials Bush), Katie Couric (man, did you check out the guns on her when she curled for Mr. Fitty Cent, who brags he has Harvard graduates working for him? This is one babe even Paula Broadwell or “Bangs” Obama wouldn’t want to arm wrestle) tackled Manti Te’o who claims, OK, he was hoaxed, but playing through psychic pain “was all real and that’s something that I can’t fake.” I don’t get it: why he didn’t friend her on Facebook?
And finally, we get the good news that Madonna, no longer living in the material world, plans to muscle her brand into the exercise-video business. I suspect we can soon see birth of YogaZumba. Look out, Lady Gaga.
Algeria? Don’t follow parking meters.
Myles Ludwig is a media savant living in Lake Worth.