Pretending chic and being chic

There have been too many times in America’s recent past where the self appointed and mutually anointed have mixed apples and oranges, much to their chagrin. When it seemed chic to invite Black Panthers to trendy cocktail parties, and advertise it socially and politically, they did so … for a short period of time. How much of this is going on today, decades later? Very little, most suspect. When the Palestinians became a group for the first time in history, many Arabs probably quietly laughed at the idiocy of Arafat, an Egyptian, accepting a Nobel Peace Prize as a Palestinian. Yet the chic crowd invited him into their culture, though I suspect most mothers knew to lock up their sons from this sexual predator. And what seems so astounding these days is this happened in the US and in particular the Boston to DC corridor, a bastion of true American patriotism (in spite of all the chic images otherwise).

The most disappointing trend along this line is the values of the young people involved in mass media. Mass media includes printed media, TV, radio, and even blogs. It appears to many that they have been screwed in the worst sort of way by their educational experience. This includes the most basic ideas about values, debates, investigative reporting, and the most basic skills to honor this and go about that. And their teachers are the ones that screwed them. What was chic to their teachers is not necessarily so these days. But don’t expect many young younger media types to even have a hint of the idea, and discussion.

Fortunately many older types were indoctrinated to the idea of equal opportunity. Nowhere was equal outcome mentioned for any reasons, to include good intentions, mommy tracks, and upbringing. In the end, common sense and numbers, and the vote have balanced those with societal agendas who have tried to change us all. Those who have tried to outwit and out maneuver the voters have been on a losing tide of history, now going on for decades.

How inviting Black Panthers to a cocktail party could be chic is a given having read history. How inviting equal opportunity patriots from throughout the world to today’s chic cocktail parties is up for grabs. To not do so suggests a more deep societal cancer that must be ruthlessly excised. Fortunately, the patient is healthy, and a little nurturing will help a lot.

How chic “equal opportunity” should be. It is because it is chic, and so unusual in the world today. Its home bastion is the US. Until chic about equal opportunity can become like the cocktail parties that brought in the Black Panthers in the past, one hopes chic is more limited to the entertainment and paparazzi crowd with all its light intellectual weight and political influence.