Fraters Libertas

You're Not Good Enough, You're Not Smart Enough, And...

The other night JB Doubtless and I were talking about the early rounds of "American Idol" and the delusions that so many of the contestants labor under in when it comes to their true abilities. They seem to have bought into the notion that if you work hard enough and hold on to your dreams you can do anything. Of course, you can't do anything if you don't have the talent for it, no matter how hard you work or wish to make it happen. One of the funniest things on "American Idol" is watching people who don't make it promise that "I'll be back, you haven't heard the last of me America." You know I hate to break it to ya champ, but I think we can safely say that we have in fact heard the last of you.

Steve Salerno has a great piece at NRO in this subject called, Overdosing on Oprah:

But common sense suggests that this relentless emphasis on personal satisfaction betokens grim news for marriage, workplace camaraderie, or unity of any kind. One wonders how a nation comprising 295 million individuals, each vowing not to let anyone take away his dreams, could arrive at a true sense of collective purpose, especially with humility now in such short supply. Pop-psychology once taught us to wallow in our faults and limitations. It now teaches us to deny them, if not revel in them (as anyone who watches early-season episodes of American Idol can attest). As a culture, we went from impotence to omnipotence, sneering at the more realistic middle ground we sped past en route.

If empowerment is a quasi-religion -- which is how Oprah and some of its other champions seem to frame it -- perhaps it could use an updated version of the serenity prayer made popular by the twelve-step regimens it disdains: Something like, "Lord give me the enthusiasm to pursue what I excel at, the modesty to admit what I stink at, and the wisdom to know that there is a difference."

Amen.

While you're over at NRO, don't miss this update from Catherine Seipp on that beacon of tolerance and civil discourse, Lawrence O'Donnell. The man who once sought to shout down Swift Vet champion John O'Neil by screaming "Creepy Liar!!!" over and over again when the two appeared on MSNBC's Scarborough Country turned his ire Seipp's way on the Dennis Miller show:

I suspect, by the way, that this dynamic may have had something to do with how infuriated Lawrence O'Donnell got last week on Dennis Miller when I questioned his insistence that "every single one" of the teachers at his daughter's elite public elementary school was "GREAT!" (And maybe all the children there are above average?)

Perhaps hearing a woman suggest that he doesn't know quite as much about his child's school as he thinks he does pushed some of his buttons, because this really was an amazing meltdown -- which I now feel lucky to have witnessed before Miller was cancelled yesterday -- complete with clenched fist and throbbing neck veins.

But remembering how O'Donnell puffed up his chest, stuck out his manly jaw and sat up extremely straight as he became enraged on the Miller show -- I suppose so I could get the full effect of just how much taller he is than I -- makes me wonder about something I've noticed lately: When did it become O.K. for a man to yell at a woman in exactly the same tone he'd use with another man in a bar fight?

What a class act. You the man Lawrence. You the man.