Vanessa Williams Redux

About twenty years ago, I wrote a piece about the Vanessa Williams/Miss America scandal that examined how morally ambiguous our society has become, and how difficult it is to really assign roles like "hero" and "villain" anymore, well, "anymore" meaning in 1984.

Looking at the players in the recent Anna Nicole saga, it's safe to say things haven't changed much. If anything, the line between "good" and "bad" behavior and motivation has blurred even more.

There are really four major players in the Anna Nicole saga; Anna herself, her lawyer/boyfriend Howard K. Stern, her "other" boyfriend Larry Birkhead, and Virgie Arthur, Anna's mother. As with the Williams story, it's easy to quickly jump to conclusions and point the finger at who was to blame for the unquestionable tragedies that befell Anna Nicole, but ultimately all we find is a collection of tragic human beings swept up in a story that seemed destined to end badly.

It's easy to ridicule and judge Anna. She was really famous for little more than being very beautiful (something she had in common with a lot of others, incidentally). She behaved bizarrely in her "reality" TV show; at times being childlike, at others insolent and selfish, and almost always demanding. Her weight fluctuated wildly, and she didn't seem to have the slightest knowledge of what was going on in the world that existed outside of her strange Hollywood existence. She slurred her speech, whether it was from having a "Texas drawl" or the use of prescription medications or a combination of the two, we'll probably never know. In short, she was an easy target and she received it in spades.

But she certainly didn't intend to harm anyone. She didn't force anyone to watch her show, or her handful of terrible movies, or to buy her magazines. We were fixated on Anna for a lot of reasons; her echoes of Marilyn Monroe, her "outrageous" lifestyle, her "rags to riches" history and the sheer audacity she projected which seemed to imply that all of the craziness in her life was no big deal.

Anna probably wasn't the world's greatest role model for her son, but who is, ultimately? For all her silliness, she obviously loved the boy and did what she at least thought was right for him. If it turns out she wasn't a perfect parent, again, I think she has plenty of company. Anna supported herself and her family, she took advantage of the scant opportunities life had given her and ran with them. We'll probably never know the whole story behind why she really left home, but it seems almost certain that it was more than just "running with a bad crowd".

She certainly didn't wish for the tragic turn of events that took Daniel's life, nor did she probably fully understand how self-destructive her own behavior was, or how difficult she must have made it to be her friend and still be honest with her. Regardless of what the show tried to project, it couldn't have been a lot of fun being Anna Nicole Smith. So while we all have to take responsibility for our own actions, I don't think it's really fair to say she was a "bad" person without a comprehensive account of where she came from and why she behaved the way she did. In the end, she seems a lot more like a lost little girl than a villainess to me, and wherever she is right now I hope she's bested the demons that plagued her during her short life.

Intertwined in Anna's life like a sad, needy Oroburos was the lovesick, enabling Howard K. Stern. I don't know anything of Howard's life before Anna, but it's easy to glean a lot about who he was from watching the TV show. Howard was Anna's yes man, her confidant, her "best friend" and her safety valve. He tried to apply the brakes when she needed them applied, keep her out of legal, financial and career trouble as much as possible. The media wants so badly to paint this poor nebbish as some kind of Svengali who orchestrated some mad plan to grab hold of Anna's fortune but it's so obvious that the tail was wagging the dog here. Anna screamed at Howard, relied on him, constantly threatened to stop speaking to him, belittled him, rejected him, teased him, in short, took advantage of what was undoubtedly his adoration of her to get what she wanted and needed.

Howard should be kicked in the butt for allowing his best friend to continue on her self-destructive ways without laying down the law, and for creating an environment where everything she did was "OK" somehow because he made it so and still loved her at the end of the day. But he's not a villain, either. He's just a poor guy who didn't know how to tell someone he loved to change and was probably afraid if he did so he'd lose her. That sounds like a lot of people I know, none of whom have horns or a pointed tail.

I don't really know that much about Larry Birkhead. He doesn't look like a member of Mensa, that's for sure, but he doesn't strike me as malicious at all, just a bit foggy and shallow. He slept with Anna but apparently she didn't want to marry him, or if she did, she got cold feet because she seems to have retreated to Howard for comfort and protection (probably a pattern). He seems to have at least some means of support so his entire motivation couldn't be monetary. I'm sure he didn't mind the dubious fame he achieved by being Anna Nicole Smith's boyfriend, but maybe we should take him at his word that he really just wants to have custody of what he, and apparently most others, feel is "his" daughter.

Last and to my mind, least, in this drama is Anna's mother, Vergie. It's hard for me to believe that Anna's problems stemmed totally from the "wrong crowd" explanation Vergie put forward. Certainly every situation is seen through the subjective prisms of all those who experience it, and from Vergie's point of view Anna (AKA "Vicki") was a troubled, willful girl who just wouldn't listen to Mama. But it's hard to look at that tape from "Entertainment Tonight" of Anna seething with rage (and uncharacteristic clarity) about the "Mommy Dearest" whom she wants no part of anymore. It can't all have stemmed from Vergie's allegations about her and/or Howard's potential role in Daniel's death. Some of that bitterness is old, hard and frozen in her psyche but God knows what type of history with her mother, but you can bet it wasn't particularly pleasant.

So if there is a "camp" to be in, this isn't the one I'd choose. Vergie seems hard, bitter, controlling and dictatorial and it's hard to dismiss her sudden entrance into her daughter's life after so long an absence as being motivated solely by concern over her daughter's wishes and legacy.

Still, regardless of the quality of her parenting, Vergie cannot really be blamed for all the decisions that Anna made after she was a grown woman. None of us have perfect parents, and at some point we have to take responsibility for our own actions and let go of whatever real or perceived wrongs our parents visited upon us. Anna obviously had a lot of pain associated with her memories of childhood and the allegations made by Vergie no doubt brought them all to the forefront, but Vergie didn't make her dream of Hollywood fame or choose the reckless, shallow lifestyle that Anna chose.

And denial can be a powerful motivator. If faced with the charges of being a terrible mother, Vergie would have no doubt fallen back on the old "I did the best that I could under trying circumstances" plea. Maybe in trying to insinuate herself back into Anna's life (if such can be said after someone has died) she was somehow trying to make up for the mistakes she'd made. She may well have reasonably thought she was "protecting" Anna from what she perceived as bad influences. Whatever her motivation, it's a lead pipe cinch that she didn't want her daughter dead, and would probably have wanted a richer relationship with her while she was alive.

In my old essay about Vanessa Williams, I more or less concluded that modern real life dramas are difficult to stage as "morality plays" because the moralities involved are inherently complex. We know so much about each participant and each comes equipped with the bully pulpit of the media so that we often aren't sure where, if anywhere, we can affix blame. My closing line was "they just don't make villains like they used to."

With the Smith story, I think that's true but there's also something deeper going on. I've noticed not only how hard it is to cast the players in terms of "hero" and "villain" but also how much people WANT to cast them in such terms. We want our heroes squeaky clean and our villains to be unredeemable devils. It makes life much simpler and easy because that's the way we want to see ourselves and our actions. We don't want to be able to see similarites between ourselves and someone we've judged to be bad, because maybe that means there's some "bad" in us as all and some "good" in those we dislike. That kind of thinking throws all of our calculations off, and makes us do the hardwork of evaluating people as people, in a very comprehensive and sympathetic way.

I guess it's not nearly as easy to point and laugh when you are pointing at a mirror.

Straight Into Darkness

I don't know what happened with me and sports.

When I was very young, around eight to twelve, I used to watch almost all the Chicago Cubs' baseball games. I wasn't a Cub fan, mind you. I rooted against them, partly because my dad and mom did so, partly because most everyone I knew was a Cub fan and I got so tired of their excuses for not winning.

But I did watch almost every game broadcast on WGN-TV from probably 1973-1977. My folks and I even kept a homemade scorecard for each game, listing players, what they did each at bat, inning by inning scores, substitutions, etc. My friend Tim and I used to do mock broadcasts of games into my old style portable tape recorder. I had a whiffleball league that played almost every day in my backyard and most of us kept records of our home runs; some of us even did doubles and triples.

In the winter, when baseball was over, I played basketball on the playgrounds after school, went over on Saturday mornings when they opened the gym, and when it was really cold I just shot my Nerf basketball into the nets I had set up in our washroom. When I think back I don't know how my poor mom tolerated it. The constant noise of my feet pounding the floor as I played the roles of Pete Maravich, Jon Havlicek, Rick Barry, Elvin Hayes and countless other NBA stars, the intrusion of the puffball into her laundry, the cat and dog food, their water dishes. Sometimes a couple friends would come inside and play with me, and I can only imagine how she must have longed for a moment's peace at those times. Again, I kept "score" of my faux league on sheets of spiral notebook paper, and did a running play by play commentary in the grand style of Pat Sommerall and Hot Rod Hundley. Life was good.

I went out for basketball in middle school but seldom got into the games. I was skinny, fairly short and not all that fleet of foot. I was a good shot, but seldom shot the ball. I played so rarely that when I did I was a bit mesmerized by the crowd and the lights and whatever dubious spotlight they threw upon me, so I tended to dribble a bit and pass off. Story of my life, I guess.

By the time eighth grade rolled around, I had gained weight but not much else. I was still slow, still a good shot but not muscular enough to do any rebounding nor fast enough to be very good at defense. I could shoot the daylights out of free throws, but if no one fouled me I wasn't much of a threat.

I decided not to go out my freshmen year of high school. I had endured three years of two hour after school practices that left me just as exhausted as the starters yet I saw little or no benefit. It was obvious by now that I was never going to be anything more than a benchwarmer; the coach even told me as much. So all my vaunted shooting skills were for naught, as were all my dreams of becoming an NBA star. The DNA just wasn't going to cooperate with this fantasy.

In between middle school and high school, I played in an intramural league set up by the new high school coach. I had gained weight (my fat Elvis period) and was probably even slower than before, but overall I didn't do too badly. I had a much better coach, and in this league I actually got to play. I never liked being "skins" of course because my expanding waistline was visible in all its glory, but I did have fun during that summer. And between my seventh and eighth grade, after I was too old for Little League, I played on a pony league baseball team that my dad helped coach (just as he had my Little League team). For some reason I didn't perform all that well in this league. Maybe it was the fact that my interest was waning, or maybe it was just my weight gain. For whatever reason, I don't recall much of that season other than striking out a lot and the guys that we played being huge compared to us.

I think it was around this time that I started turning away from sports. I'm not quite sure why. I remember watching the old "Son of Frankenstein" movie on WGN TV after viewing an old "Star Trek" episode and something was reignited inside of me. I had always loved fantasy and horror films as a young (under eight) kid, and while I never really rejected or grew away from them, for about four years sports really became my obsession above all else. Maybe it was my growing realization that I just didn't have the physical necessities to really make much of an impact in the sports world coupled with the coincidental proximity of the shows I mentioned. Whatever it was, I could feel myself being drawn further and further back into my old interests and further away from my newer ones. I stopped keeping score of games, and suddenly it wasn't all that big a deal if I missed watching one. I still followed sports pretty regularly, but as time went on it was more because my folks still did than because I was really passionate about it.

I did play three years of high school baseball. The first year (sophomore) I never started but at least there was a "B" game wherein all the benchwarmers got to strut their stuff, or what passed for stuff. I usually played first base, being somewhat tall, thin (again) and left handed. My junior year I joined the starting squad but I still wasn't all that good. I had a good glove at first but didn't pack much of a punch at the plate. My senior year my hitting got a bit better and I'm sure my on base percentage was high when you factored in all my walks and "hit by pitches". I guess they never did learn how to pitch to lefties. We did well my senior year; I believe we finished second in the conference and I really feel like I contributed to that effort a certain amount.

I didn't go out for sports when I went to college in 1982, but I took part in an intramural basketball league during my freshman year (1982-1983). I did OK, more or less following the pattern I had set up earlier in my basketball "career"; good shot, little "d" and no boards. Most of the guys I played with and against were better and faster than I was, but I enjoyed myself anyway. It was something to do.

That pretty much completed my active participation in sports. I think the intramural league was dismantled after that year, and the following year (my junior year) I developed some health problems that probably would have made me sit out any seasons anyway. And as I grew older I realized that academics needed to be my real focus; at least they had the CHANCE of getting me somewhere. Sports was a dead end road for me. Sure, I could have continued playing for the sheer joy of it, but that had faded away considerably.

I watched basketball and baseball at home with my folks, again, mostly because they liked it. I didn't mind, but I just had lost that special connection I had previously. I found myself not really caring much who won or lost. As that old Tom Petty tune went, "...then one day the feeling just died...went straight into darkness...".

Maybe it was just the fact that I knew I wasn't "going anywhere" with sports, or maybe it was the resurgence of my interest in fantasy. But somehow I suspect the reason runs deeper than that. I think it has something to do with the whole sports mindset, the "winners and losers" mentality. I was losing out in a way, to the stronger, bigger guys my age, and I didn't really want to base my entire self image on whether I was able to jump high or run fast anymore. Since I obviously couldn't, I wanted to concentrate on the things that I COULD do, like write and perform well academically. That's not an ego trip; it's just mental survival.

And the older I get, the worse my estrangement from the earlier wonders of sports becomes. I think it's great to enjoy sports and have a team to root for. It hearkens back to simpler days when everything wasn't morally ambiguous and there were just "good guys and bad guys" and you got behind the good guys. But I just think a lot of people are taking it all too seriously. I mean, it's great if your team wins but ultimately, you didn't really have a damned thing to do with it, particularly if you weren't physically present at the game to add whatever psychological boost cheering adds to the game. Basically you sat home and prayed for your team to win and they either did or didn't without any real input from you. And yet so many people just wrap their entire worlds around whether a group of complete strangers (and most likely, millionaires to boot) are able to win at a game which itself doesn't really mean anything. No countries are disarmed as a result, no hungry children are fed, no diseases cured. Without meaning to sound flippant, sports is really no more important than taking your dog for a walk or doing a crossword puzzle, except for the huge sums of money involved.

I can hear you saying, "wow, this guy is so obvious. He's bitter because he blew it in sports and now he has to tear down everyone who still enjoys them." But I'm not, really. I'm just trying to find out what happened to me and sports, and try to not feel guilty about basically abandoning something that used to give me such joy. Where once I was intensely engaged in all aspects of the game, who was playing, what type of offense and defense they had, who was injured, what reserve players they had, hell, even their official statistics, now I barely know who's playing for what team and where anyone is in the standings. It's sad to lose a passion, and when it happens I think it's only natural to wonder why.

I guess there are other, more obvious, possible reasons. The players are all filthy rich, most of them seem spoiled and/or decadent, and team loyalty is rapidly fading as a concept. Rosters change so often you can't ever get to feel any sort of personal connection to the teams you are rooting for. And like every other form of mass entertainment, sports seems to be just another way to sell millions of dollars of product via advertising.

And when you can't find any joy at competing yourself and you don't have any interest in watching others play, that's pretty much game, set and match for your interest in sports. It's over.

Did the times change or did I? Probably a bit of both, I would guess. I just thought about all this last week while everyone I knew at work seemed to be caught in a fever for the Super Bowl. People wore Bears jerseys and blue and orange shoes and socks, brought in treats shaped like bears and hung signs and broadcast pro Bears messages over the intercom. It made me wish I could have joined in in the enthusiasm, but I just can't. It doesn't mean anything to me anymore, and I hate it. But I can't fake a passion. It's either there or it's not.

And despite all my great memories, of Rose and Bench and Morgan circa 1975, of Abdul Jabbar upsetting the Celtics back in 1974, of Adrian Dantley leading Notre Dame to victory over the great UCLA, of a thousand nail biters and donnybrooks, of some wonderful shared memories with my folks, that passion, that drive and sense of joy, just isn't there for me anymore.

And I miss it.

Cult Creature or Enemy Threat?

The recent Boston "terrorist threat/television promotion" acts as a workable Rorschach test for where this country's mindset is right now. Whether you see a Mooninite, a small, Atari influenced digital creature whose biggest sin is being undeservedly arrogant or a strange, threatening device says a lot about which camp you fall into in this latest, oddest skirmish in the so-called "culture wars". As with any war, both sides have their propoganda, their entrenched mindsets and their prejudices. And as usual, the 'truth' in the war probably doesn't lie on either side, but somewhere in the gooey, gray, uncomfortable middle.

On one side we have the argument that this entire situation has been blown ridiculously out of proportion. It seems certain that no one involved in the ad campaign had any intention of hurting anyone and all but certain that no one wanted to create any sort of hoax/panic. I mean, after all, it was too neo hippies hanging boards with lights powered by batteries. They even videotaped themselves doing it! Not many truly malevolent people are foolish enough to record their actions for posterity. And ultimately, are these guys responsible for the gross overreaction of an entire, apparently unhip, city? Even granting the city officials their right to be wrong, in the light of day it's patently obvious that everyone could just write it off as a misunderstanding of Brogdignagian proportions and move on.

All that's true, but as with so many culture war arguments, it's not exclusively true. That is, it's veracity doesn't negate the other sides equally convincing arguments.

To wit.

In an era of world wide terrorism, where the unthinkable can and has happened, is it really paranoid to consider that small blinking devices hung from public places in a large urban setting just MIGHT qualify as something to look into? Isn't it a bit arrogant and elitist (not to mention naive) to assume that the public mainstream would be as aware of the identity of a pop culture character as say, a college crowd? Given the current world situation, where we are, like it or not, at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, where terrorists lurk within our borders and plot God knows what against us, why is it so hard to understand people were fearful of this stealth campaign? Would it have been that difficult for instance, to just "ask" someone from Boston if this was OK before going ahead and actually doing it? How much would that have cost the Cartoon Network versus how much is it GOING to cost them because they were too lazy to bother?

It's frustrating how illustrative this is of where we are as a country. Frustrating, and scary. Everything has to be so didactic, so black and white that no one ends up giving any ground or even attempts to see the other point of view and just possibly grow as a result. Everyone in favor of invading Iraq is a "warmonger" and everyone against it is a "traitor". I've heard people say those guys that did the Boston ads should be strung up, and I've heard that the city is full of uncool morons who are no clueless they are willing to shut themselves down completely on the remote chance that something bad might happen. Both of these extreme views don't really advance the arguments for either side, they just serve to point out how deeply divided we are as a country at this period in history.

It's not bad to be divided. In fact, the truism that is really true is that our strength comes from our diversity. We don't all follow the same drummer. We argue over everything and approach situations from widely different points of view. All of that is healthy and good. The point at which is becomes unhealthy is when that diversity is not respected as it should be. That is, it's fine to think your neighbor is a moron, as long as you keep in mind how great it is that he is free to be a moron just as he is free to think of YOU as a moron. We're all going to make mistakes and misinterpret things; that's a given. I think the key is to try and learn something from each of these experiences where there's a huge gap in perspective, to try and concentrate more on how to mediate those different perspectives and less on who was "right" or "wrong".

We all love black and white situations because they are so easy to react to. Unfortunately, most situations aren't black and white; most are "offwhite and dark grey" or some permutation thereof. No one has a monopoly on the truth. I hope as we move forward in this "twilight struggle" against terrorism, that we all remember that. If we don't, the entire notion of a "culture war" may be rendered moot because we will have eliminated the culture that's being fought over.