Some disconnected ramblings on money, Mitt, Oscar and Rhonda.

Is it curmudgeonly of me to attack the Oscars for being a shameless paean to nipples, excess and gaud? I know that we're supposed to check our brains at the door and suspend disbelief when we go to see a movie—but the Oscars isn't a movie. The Oscars is/are real life to Hollywood. These people take it all seriously. They dress up in tuxes and gowns like royalty and answer reporters' fawning questions about "who they're wearing" and strut across the stage and coquettishly show lots of leg and act as if they're important and entitled to live the unapologetically greedy lives they lead...exactly as if they earned it.

And what does it say about us that we watch this tripe? Would an "Oscars" for achievements in science pull a billion viewers worldwide? I think not. An Oscars for achievements in teaching? Don't make me laugh.

Or how 'bout—get this—an Oscar for achievemnents in conscience—in empathy for one's fellow man. (Now you're probably laughing.) What do you think of an Oscar for forgoing just one set of 24K gold bathroom fixtures or that extra Lambo (driven only on weekends in nice weather) so that another family or set of families somewhere can have whatever that prodigal $1742 or $376,000 respectively buys? (And don't talk to me about Farm Aid or Live Aid or Comic Relief or any other benefits, please.... So you drive home from those "benefits" in your chauffeured Rolls and pat yourself on the back for your fine humanitarian spirit?)

Apropos of which.... How can we not attack the GOP for being a (nearly) shameless paean to greed, excess and gaud ? Rush Limbaugh declares (and Mitt implies) that we envy the super-rich because we secretly want to be like them—we hate what they have and we don't—so, peevish miscreants that we are, we don't want them to have it either. Perhaps so. But should we have it? Should anyone have it? Does anyone deserve it? If the first mission of government is ensuring the security of the people, shouldn't part of its mandate also be to promote the general security of those who've been less fortunate in life than Mitt or The Donald? (Which is almost all of us.)

Ergo, progressively higher taxes for the progressively more rich.

And finally... Keep in mind that Rhonda's The Secret and the unadulterated uber-narcissism of its law of attraction are a spiritualized rendering of the Republican creed, which tells us that America is about getting more, and then more than more, in the process devoting all of your mental energy to what you really want out of life.

It's all about you...and the rest can go screw.

Welcome aboard...

Many, many new visitors the past day or so; more than at any time in the past year. I assume this has something to do with the political post and our friend Santorum, the self-appointed savior of all Christiandom. Interesting.

God help us all.

I vowed to stay clear of politics here, at least till things get hotter and heavier toward the fall, but I am already so sick of hearing guys like Rick Santorum (and to a lesser extent, Romney) damn Obama for having "a different theology" from the uber-Christian one that's presumably supposed to underlie American political life. And I'm just as sick of hearing the right-wing talking heads defend Santorum's theocracy-speak and overall hyper-religiosity by saying things like "God informs my life as well, and it's time for men of principle to step up." (Michael Medved is a particular irritant, even though he irritates from the Judaic side of the ledger.) What's more, when they make such remarks, they tend to uphold them under the mantle of "religious freedom." They'll bloviate about how God's law requires them to take a stand against condoms for teens or abortion on demand or gay marriage or what-have-you.

They see nothing wrong with injecting those religious principles into public/government life. That's bad enough for starters.

But see, what they really mean by "God" is "MY Evangelical God." Would they be as spiritually tolerant if the God being upheld were, say, Allah? How would they feel about a devout follower of the Qu'ran who spoke openly about how his God compels him to smite the infidels or insists that women walk around on 90-degree days in the equivalent of a multi-layered full-body tent?

Why do these people not see the absurd subjective bias in their position? If religious freedom means anything at all, it means "my right to worship whichever God I want...or no God at all." It also means "my right to be free of YOUR God."

But if you asked these jokers, I'm sure they'd unflinchingly agree (at least among themselves, if not for public consumption) that "My God is the God," i.e. the One True God.

I'm somewhat reminded of the Founding Fathers, who wrote of the inalienable rights that were self-evident and conferred by a "Creator," and who then amplified on that position with such timeless lines as "All men are created equal"...when what they really meant was "all white men" (meaning literally men, and not white women, either). They didn't see the contradiction or the hypocrisy. The only saw what they could see through their obfuscatory filter of God-given moral certitude.

A few words on social diseases. Or, Bard for life?

First I thought I'd link to my latest media appearance, on FOX's KOKH (intriguing call letters) in Oklahoma. They edited my on-air time down to a rebuttal of about 20 seconds in the midst of an otherwise happy-faced piece—which is what I basically suspected would happen. Still, at least I get to make a good point about the unreality of the SHAMland promise. You can play it on full-screen by clicking the tab that appears in the lower righthand corner of the vid screen a few seconds after the page loads.

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Social inadequacy of varying stripes seems to be the generational bugaboo, gaining steam with Jenny McCarthy's misguided crusade on behalf of her son's autism (and its supposed cause), then reaching critical mass a few years back with the publication of aut-savant Daniel Tammet's remarkable memoir, Born on a Blue Day. Alienation is the anthem of this new decade (whispered very softly and without eye contact). I've been doing a lot of reading about the fabric of latter-day society, and I come across the signature terms again and again: social anxiety, social awkwardness, social deficit, panic disorder with agoraphobia, Asperger and so forth. Social malaise gives indications of being to this decade what fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome were, respectively, to the first decade of the new millennium and, before that, the 1990s. (I know people who claim to be beset by both CFS and fibromyalgia; they acquired each new syndrome as it came to the fore. I suspect that they will declare themselves agoraphobic before long.)

In some ways it's not surprising that the generation now coming of age would indeed experience such maladjustments. They were too often the products of divorce and/or significant family dysfunction; even if Mom and Dad stuck around and tried to make a go of it, the family was nuclear only in the sense that the household featured regular detonations of atomic intensity. In many cases these kids had computers for parents and turned to so-called social media for an ironic, disembodied form of friendship.

Etiology aside, this much is sure: The shrinks and gurus and life coaches will rake in the fees hand over fist, as will the drug companies that brew the various concoctions typically prescribed in such cases.

If I may be permitted to inject my (untutored, unresearched) 2 cents here, in hopes of perhaps settling the mind of just one person who sees himself/herself as a freak ...

We are all socially awkward.

We always have been, too. This is not a new phenomenon. Some of us have just learned to do a better job of faking it or overcompensating in the opposite direction, acting the gregarious fool.

I don't mean to trivialize the plight of the now-and-then person who is truly the odd man or woman out. My point is simply that while the person with social deficit may look and seem more alone or detached than the rest of us, he or she doesn't necessarily feel more alone than the rest of us do. I'm not sure how such things could be measured on a comparative scale with any objectivity/accuracy, but I have confidence in the observation nevertheless.

It's been said many times before, but you can be at a party surrounded by 50 drunken, laughing revelers and feel every bit as alone as the Death Row inmate confined to solitary. Certainly this is true of one's facility as a sexual being. A guy can empty himself into an ever-changing cast of obliging lovelies and end up feeling...well, empty. If you're a young woman, you can end the weekend full of the semen of three different men and...still feel empty.

For those of us who are not clinical cases—which, I'm convinced, is almost all of us—the answer to social awkwardness is to find two or three people who appreciate you for who you truly are. Ideally one of those three should be a mate, and the other two good friends. One good friend may suffice.

The rest of it, as Shakespeare tells us, is sound and fury signifying nothing.