I was not going to touch the celebrity passings this week, except that
Peter Schramm found a really
lovely appreciation of Farrah Fawcett. Speaking of what "the poster" meant to him as a boy in India and to others behind the Iron Curtain and in other semi-repressive societies he writes:
She had an utterly American sense of openness and fun, with a smile that suggested that life was fundamentally good and full of promise, that anything could happen (and that a few really fun things certainly would). Imagine the impact of her image, and subliminal message, in the towns and cities of sterile societies where the pursuit of happiness was not part of political scripture.
Of her death being overshadowed by the passing of the man the author calls our "most squalid icon":
The contrast between Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson could not be clearer. He was a grotesque, and in every way. He's an American icon in spite of his fondness for small boys, his skin-whitening and his general lunacy. So where does that leave us? Ululating for a Martian, and brushing aside the girl next door.
Or, put another way, celebrating our own decline.
I don't know that Fawcett's life beyond the poster is exactly a "poster" for the girl next door, but I take his point. She was Catholic and as Catholics tend to even after years of rebellion,
she came home.
I was not going to touch the celebrity passings this week, except that Peter Schramm found a really lovely appreciation of Farrah Fawcett. Speaking of what "the poster" meant to him as a boy in India and to others behind the Iron Curtain and in other semi-repressive societies he writes:
