Meta Fuss

April 13,2008

It’s April the 13th.

The Red Sox play tonight, the final game of the Yankee series, the 8PM ESPN game. Dice K, who Yankee bloggers seem unusually upset at, against Philip Hughes. Maybe it’s selective amnesia, but I don’t recall being so outraged about the happiness of Yankee fans between 1996-2000. They seem to take a wicked pleasure in any misstep we take, and to virulently degrade any success we achieve.

I completely missed the fuss over the Vogue cover-the Slate Cultural Gabfest covered it, reminded me of the other symbols behind the image. The cover is of LeBron James, facing the camera with an angry, perhaps post-dunk face, and Gisele Bundchen, looking suitably femme fatale ish. I had seen the cover, but it didn’t make an impression on me until the SCG pointed out that it is a King Kong image-Bundchen, of course, as Fay Wray.

It seems like the fuss was not so much a fuss as a meta fuss-people talked about whether or not there should be a fuss, rather than there being an actual fuss about the image being racist. The photo is by Annie Leibowitz, so, of course, its selection is no accident. An interesting sub genre of fuss is the fact that Vogue, a magazine by and about women, has a cover with a man doing something and a woman just watching and looking beautiful. Speaking personally, I would find the image equally compelling if it were Diana Taurasi looking fierce and Justin Timberlake looking on, but of course, the symbolism wouldn’t be there. And I wouldn’t be talking about it.

I also would probably violate the Blogger Code if I didn’t talk about Obama’s supposed verbal gaffe. If anybody supposes for a minute there aren’t embittered people in Pennsylvania, and everywhere, who are sick and tired of having it be stuck to them, every single damn day of their lives, they are out of their little minds. Reminds me of the Bill Hicks line about drugs only being illegal because they allow you to see, for a few precious minutes, just how badly you’re being fucked.