September 10, 2007--Spearfishing

I am typing this at the precise moment when General Petraeus is beginning his long-awaited report to Congress. In effect, he will be asserting that he, Petraeus is doing well, that the surge plan he formulated is producing good enough results and thus there should be no shift in strategy or significant draw-down of troops until at least March. Well, maybe as a bone to Democrats it might be possible to bring home one brigade—4,000 soldiers, about the number thus far killed in combat. A sort of grim form of poetic symmetry. Since I can’t stand thinking about this any more, like millions of other Americans I turned my attention to something of at least equal interest—Britney Spears’ performance on last night’s MTV Video Music Awards show. I kept a careful eye on the clock not wanting to miss her reemergence. I suspect like most I was hoping for the worst. And on first look I/we were not disappointed. She looked like a middle-age pole dancer so high on something that she could barely walk much less dance and gyrate. She did not even present a good cartoon version of her former nubile self. I could sense all the TV critics and bloggers panting over their keyboards, readying their best Schadenfreudean zingers. Me included. For example, Kelefa Sanneh in the NY Times quotes the host, Sarah Silverman: “She’s amazing! I mean, she’s 25 years old and she’s already accomplished everything she’s going to accomplish in life.” (Article linked below.) The cruelty of this, beyond humor, set off some revisionist thinking on my part. Can it be, I thought, that she’s already 25? How did that happen? What might we reasonably expect someone to become who made a career out of being precociously pre-pubescent with a Lolita body and a latent sexuality that seemed to pulsate beyond her awareness and control? Or of someone who likely never went to school and if she had would have majored in cheerleading? Retrospectively, I began to think of her as deprived, even with her reported $100 million in net worth, as having been denied anything resembling a normal childhood. A familiar showbiz phenomenon with all the expected fallout. Watching the tape of her this morning while flipping from news channel to news channel, it was the lead story on all three cable networks, seeing the glee on the faces of the entertainment “reporters” as they slowed the tape to be sure we didn’t miss her stumbles or the ripples in the bulge around her middle, I thought she looked, actually, great. Of course her outfit was in its own way obscene, but she looked just how a beautiful 25 year old might on a late summer day at the beach with her two kids. I’m thinking that Britney will figure out a way to reinvent herself and hoping that she has still more to accomplish. About General Petraeus on the other hand . . . .