All Things Must Pass

Old pop stars don’t die, they just fade away.

At least, such is the case for Paul McCartney. As anyone who watched the 2005 Super Bowl and didn’t go barbeque something during half-time knows, the 63-year old ex-Beatle was the headliner for the 15-minute show. He played mostly songs from his Fab Four days, but there was one moment of independence where he actually belted out an old Wings song.

The choice of McCartney to play the super bowl is an obvious one given the excessive fear over last year’s Janet Jackson imbroglio. The kind folks at the Super Bowl, not to mention Network Standards and Practices, wanted to make sure that we had a nice, healthy, wholesome show with much in the way of Americana and little in the way of nipple rings. After a show that’s grandest moment was a rape allegory, it is easy to understand why the powers that be would want to return to scandal-free mode.

So, here’s my thing: what the heck happened to Paul McCartney? Forty years ago having McCartney on stage in front of hundreds of women was just another way of saying that you needed to hire extra security. Can you imagine the consequences had there been a Super Bowl for the Beatles to play then? The adman at the time suggesting that such a show would be hassle-free and low-risk would have been laughed all the way back to his pie chart flip board. So what is it? How did we go from Paul McCartney – Sex Symbol to Paul McCartney – Safe Non-Offensive Alternative to Janet Jackson’s Breasts?

The obvious answer is age. Not only has Paul grown up (notice it’s not like he’s still sporting a bowl-cut anymore), but the country and the world has aged too.

But I think it’s more than that.

Following Jackson with McCartney would seem to be a little bit like feeling obligated to go to church on Sunday morning after getting caught by your preacher on Saturday night visiting a house of ill-repute, only on the national level. It’s a way of saying, “See, that incident was just a fluke. I’m not really that person.” But that analogy implies a sense of impropriety and maybe I just see guilt everywhere because I’m Catholic. I’ll give you that.

The reason I say it would seem to be this way is because I’m not convinced that collectively we feel there was anything wrong with the breast-baring. Certainly on an individual level, people feel that a much larger deal was made out of the whole thing. Having a dourer halftime performer was an act of appeasement, not of contrition. And rightly so. I’m not the first person to suggest that the anger we made out of Janet Jackson is really pretty sad in comparison to the myriad of other things that we could have chosen to be angry about. That for most places in the world people wouldn’t even be able to watch the super bowl because they don’t have power, to say nothing of television sets, is one example. That people should be upset because a woman’s breast got partially exposed and not because it was a man playing to some understated rape fantasy is another.

This is the power of visual media: for all its notions of being able to preserve the past in near-perfect or, let’s face it, sometimes grainy clarity (if only they’d had hi-def for that Ed Sullivan show back in '64), what visual media really does is help to foster an attempt at erasing that past. It fundamentally changes the way in which we experience entertainment, news, news-entertainment, politics, and even household appliances. I recently saw a refrigerator being sold at an electronics store that featured a built-in television next to the ice dispenser. I can only assume that this is the feature intended for midnight snackers so that they can watch infomercials while eating the last of the Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer.

Is it bad that this erasing occurs? Sounds like an “eye of the beholder” question. It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. Progress is certainly better than stagnation. We want to try to undo the past by presenting a new image, one shinier and better than the one that preceded it, but we can’t ever really obliterate what has come before. This is why it is appropriate that two flashy young sexualized performers should be replaced the following year by a former flashy young sexualized performer turned distinguished gentleman of the music industry. Like a flashbulb in a camera, the intense part is over soon and we’re left with a fading discoloration in our eyes.

Turning Over An Old Leaf

The old adage is right: There really is nothing new under the sun. Survivor is now in its sixth incarnation; John Paul II has died but Benedict XVI was one of his right-hand men; The Amityville Horror was just released to be followed by remakes of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Batman, Superman and yet another XXX movie, though this time without Vin Diesel. And, of course, there’s social security.

The “new” Bush Social Security plan is really the same old thing, rewrapped as a brand new initiative. The wealthiest are still taking the smallest hit while the rapidly shrinking middle class take the biggest. The administration is selling the plan as something new and innovative – an attempt at proving not only are they concerned about your future, but also that they aren’t beholden to the wealthy. The President was adamant that this plan would take money away from the rich and give it to the poor.

Let’s be clear on something: despite the administration’s proclamations, this is not Robin Hooding. There is no Noblesse Oblige in this plan. There is, however, an element of class warfare in the oldest definition of the phrase. President Bush maintains that the poorest Americans won’t be affected by his new plan and that it will allow them to maintain their current schedule of payments. He’s completely right. What he doesn’t say is that the same doesn’t hold true across the rest of us. And I’m actually not talking about the rich. The burden of the plan will be staunchly held by the middle class.

The New York Times’ Paul Krugman points out that cutting the benefits of the middle classes creates a serious economic concern. For many people stuck in the middle class, they will need their social security checks in order to keep their homes once they retire. By contrast, cut the benefits of Dick Cheney and “only his accountants will notice” because Dick Cheney obviously does not rely on Social Security as his safety net once his job ends in 2008. This is to say nothing of the notion that I’m sure he will find some way of procuring a regular paycheck even after his tenure of Vice President is over. Weep not, dear friends, for Mr. Cheney.

When Rome began to fall in third and fourth centuries, one of the precursors to the disintegration was the failure of the middle class. For almost 1000 years, Rome had functioned with a class system similar to the one America has enjoyed throughout much of the 20^th Century. Towards the end, the middle class was essentially obliterated. Everyone was either wealthy or poor, with very little in-between. With no middle class, the majority of the people sank into poverty instead of soaring out of it.

The benefit of this plan is that the wealthy were über-wealthy. Of course, they were also über-small in number which is exactly what you don’t want to be when the hungry serfs come a-callin’ with their pitchforks. But, truth to be told, Rome didn’t fall by way of a violent uprising. Nero may have fiddled dramatically at the end, but like General Macarthur, this old empire didn’t die – it just faded away.

The consequences of the unintentional removal of the middle class were obviously dire, but they certainly weren’t intentional. No one wanted the destruction of the middle class and certainly no one wanted an unstable union that couldn’t hold when its size and weight become too cumbersome. What’s the good in being supremely wealthy and privileged if you don’t have a couple of good servants to fetch things for you?

I won’t belabor the obvious parallels between Rome and our post-modern America in this scenario. Well, at least not overly so. I will say that any plan that, whether intentionally or otherwise, contributes to the destruction of the middle class is not a good thing. Holding power is like trying to keep mercury in your hands. Not only is it poisonous, but the bloody stuff is slippery, messy and has a tendency to nip out just when you needed it the most.

Great nations don’t always end in violent conquest. They oftentimes fall victim to their own bad judgment. The Greeks called it “hubris”. You’ll remember we covered that back in Freshman English. The country cannot let the center fall apart. Otherwise, the fall of America may come a lot like T.S. Elliot predicted – not with a bang but a whimper.