Letterman is empty; he\u00e2\u0080\u0099s inert; he stands for nothing except disdain for people foolish enough to stand for anything - aside from rote obesciance to all the things Decent People stand for, of course, all those shopworn assumptions passed around in the bubble.
\nThis posture was fresh in \u00e2\u0080\u009980; it even had energy. But it paralyzes the heart after a while. You end up an SOB who shows up at the end of the night to reassure that nothing matters. I think he may have invented the posture of Nerd Cool, an aspect so familiar to anyone who reads message boards - the skill at deflating enthusiasm, puncturing passion with a hatpin lobbed from a safe distance. The instinctive unease with the wet messy energy of actual people.
\nYes, reading too much into it. Really, it\u00e2\u0080\u0099s just a rote slam: If your mother is a loathed politician, and your older sister gets pregnant, famous old men can make jokes about you being knocked up by rich baseball players, and there\u00e2\u0080\u0099s nothing you can do. That\u00e2\u0080\u0099s the culture: a flat, dead-eyed, square-headed old man who\u00e2\u0080\u0099ll go back to the writers and ask for more Palin-daughter knocked-up jokes, because that one went over well. Other children he won\u00e2\u0080\u0099t touch, but not because he\u00e2\u0080\u0099s decent. It\u00e2\u0080\u0099s because he\u00e2\u0080\u0099s a coward.
\nOh, one more thing: it\u00e2\u0080\u0099s okay for David to say that because someone said something else about someone, and since I didn\u00e2\u0080\u0099t write about that, I\u00e2\u0080\u0099m a hypocrite. Just so we\u00e2\u0080\u0099re clear.
\nvia \u00c2\u00bb Blog Archive \u00c2\u00bb Wednesday, June 10.
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