The Oppenheimer Report 2/21/11

Two popular leaders

Of course I watched the Grammys a week ago last Sunday night, if only to remind myself how out of touch I have become with the trends in popular music. Notable to me were the facts that over-hyped Canadian child superstar Justin Bieber didn’t win bupkiss, and Arcade Fire, a Canadian alternative rock band from Montreal, won for album of the year (The Suburbs). I’m not very familiar with that band, though I did see them perform on SNL last year. Watching their performance on the Grammys, it was difficult to see why they were deemed worthy of the award, but to play the devil’s advocate, it’s tough for me to judge any band by its performance on television. I will say that the onstage bicycle stunts and wild light show did nothing for me. Give me a pair of headphones and an hour to listen to the band without distractions and I’ll let you know what I think. It does seem to me that today’s pop musical performances are a lot more about show than they used to be, and choreography is certainly a big part of the act. Even Lady Gaga, the current queen of pop, said in a “60 Minutes” interview that she considers herself a performance artist. Big hair, flashy outfits, electronic gimmickry and other props play an increasingly important role in today’s pop. Enough with the eye candy, where is the music? It was interesting to watch this awards ceremony with my octogenarian parents-in-law, who are of the belief that nobody since Vic Damone has been capable of producing acceptable popular music. I thought maybe Eminem would turn them around, but that didn’t happen. I never thought I’d say this, but the 67 year old Mick Jagger looked pretty good in his tribute to the recently deceased Solomon Burke. Jagger might have resembled aging poultry, an apt description Letterman once used to describe himself, but he can still get the crowd rocking, and he didn’t need a lot of gyrating dancers or elaborate costumes to enhance his performance. What did we fossils do back in the dark ages of music, when it was just the band, some spot lights, and the audience … back when “wardrobe malfunction” meant Jim Morrison had once again pulled his pants down in public?




Erectile dysfunction is no laughing matter, and judging from the number of ads proposing remedies, I’m led to believe that a lot of men suffer from it. And it’s not just older men; a lot of the guys portrayed in the commercials are a lot younger than I (O.K., so maybe they‘re still old men). I am happy that there are drugs out there which facilitate sexual intimacy and address the deleterious effects of DSB (deadly sperm buildup), but some of these ads for boner pills are pretty silly. What marketing genius decided that two naked people in separate bathtubs constitutes a metaphor for the horizontal mambo? Does the bathtub equal sex, or have the bathers already had sex and now they’re just relaxing after the act? How did they get those heavy bathtubs out there to the edge of a cliff, and why aren’t they in the same bathtub? And why aren’t they smoking cigarettes, in their separate bath tubs? I have so many questions. Apparently, when you take a Cialis, the house you’re in immediately folds up and disappears, and suddenly you’re in the woods, presumably screwing like squirrels. I don’t know about you, but I want my four hour erection to be in a five star hotel room, not in the woods where my erect winkie is a dinner bell for every biting insect on the planet.



One old guy who can still “get it up” is Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who will go to trial in April to face charges that he paid a seventeen year old woman to have sex with him. I thought France won the European award for most conspicuous horn dog politician, but there’s a new ram in town. The way the papers put it, it is a crime to pay for sex in Italy, if the girl is under eighteen. So, it’s O.K. if you DON’T pay her? If convicted, the billionaire-turned-politician could face up to fifteen years in prison. I’m not exactly sure if the bigger issue was statutory rape, or the fact that Berlusconi allegedly paid the girl to try and make the scandal go away. If he broke the law, and was dumb enough to get caught, then he should probably face the consequences. That said, in my opinion, the morality scale seems to be sliding downward; just listen to the lyrics of some of today’s rap and hip hop. As much as I hope that the big head is doing all the thinking among today‘s leaders, I fear that this is optimistic. I try to sift through the moral depravity in order to determine who is the most effective leader. Do I want the lying, closet homosexual, right wing, bible thumping hypocrite who solicits oral sex in airport bathrooms, or do I want the arrogant, lying, Big Mac-hoovering, left wing president who receives oral sex from an intern in the Oval Office? America is a democracy, and however uninformed, we the people get to chose. You know what they say: two heads are better than one. The trick is determining which two. Elliott Spitzer for president!

BTW -  Happy Family Day.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED