Mel Gibson and the Problem of Public Privacy

So Mel Gibson has been exposed (once again) as an intolerant, sexist, abusive person. A recording of a phone conversation with his former girlfriend is now Out There on the internet and one can listen to Mel spill molten verbiage into her earpiece while she calmly refutes his charges. All I can wonder is, So what? What business is this of ours? This is private stuff. People lose control. Between each other, with strangers, but more often with those closest, people have moments when the mouth ill-advisedly opens and vileness falls out. The question is, does this define us? Are we, in fact, only to be defined by our worst moments? That would seem to be the case for people like Gibson. The reason, I think, is that for most of us, the Mel Gibsons of the world have no business having shitty days and acting like this. For most of us, there is just cause for having these kinds of days and attitudes, because for most of us the world is not our oyster and we do not have the luxury of squandering time, friends, and money. Mel Gibson is wealthy and famous and, at one time, admired. He ate at the best restaurants, appeared on television, gave interviews, has his picture on the covers of magazines. Is seen with other people, regularly, who fall into that category of Those Who Have It Made.

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All those cameras

Here's a random thought. I suspect that small tightly-knit communities--small towns--have tended to produce, on average, more people with a traditional sense of morality--more people with strong consciences. Don't steal, don't kill, be kind, look out to help others in need, for instance. I don't know this to be a fact. Rather, it's anecdotal, but it's based on 54 years of experience. I also suspect that part of the reason that this is true (to the extent that it is true) is that people in small towns keep a close eye on each other. In small towns, I suspect that children grow up more closely watched and corrected by others (especially corrected by neighbors and even strangers) when they gets out of line. I think that this sort of upbringing will tend to produce more of a traditional moral "conscience." Now consider that there are a lot of cameras out there these days. Lots and lots of government cameras, of course, but also millions of phone cameras as well as plain old . . . cameras. Anything unusual that happens out in a public space is now likely to draw at least some photos and video. Is it possible that all of these cameras in big cities might have the effect of turning big city "dog-eat-dog" people into something more akin to small town people? Will the presence of so many cameras tend to make big city people feel constantly "watched." Will that, in turn, encourage big city individuals to develop traditional moral habits?

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Cigarettes save the environment by killing humans

The Onion reports:

"By killing off the No. 1 threat to the environment, new Marlboro Earths will have a long-term effect on the overall health of our planet," Philip Morris spokesperson Janet Weiss said. "If everyone in America does their part and joins our new green-smoking movement, then together we can eradicate man's destructive practices once and for all."

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The problem with oratory skills

Noam Chomsky doesn't put any value in polished oratory skills, a point he made clear in an interview he gave Nigel Farndale at Telegraph.co.uk:

I am no Barack Obama,’ he says to me now. ‘I don’t have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had. I don’t like to listen to it. Even people I admire, like Martin Luther King, just turn me off. I don’t think it is the way to reach people. If you are giving a graduate course you don’t try to impress the students with oratory, you try to challenge them, get them to question you.’
What does Chomsky think of Obama?
I take it he didn’t buy into Obama’s message of hope and change. ‘Elections in the United States are expensive extravaganzas run by the public relations industry. The PR people looked at the polls and picked slogans accordingly. ‘Did you know Obama won the best campaign of the advertising industry in 2008? It was politicians being marketed as a product, like toothpaste. What does that have to do with democracy? If you read his statement you find yourself asking what was the hope? What was the change? These were empty words.’

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