(note: indignation is defined in Lippmann and here as an egotistical winnowing down of the world using one's one undeniably selective and Janus-faced standards, often accompanied by projection of dissatisfaction upon the mirror at hand in the direction of untoward stimulus and away from the judgment of the reflection.)

For starters, the unparalleled number of coincidences surrounding the Fox network's broadcast, and ill-fated re-broadcast of the latest blip on the Bread and Circuses screen. The thoughtful and unbusy among us could not have helped but note with the excessive glee of the critic that the producer of "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-millionaire?" was a fellow called Fleiss, Mike. At this early stage I shall make the necessary but often disappointed assumption that the public's memory still contains remnants of one Heidi Fleiss, and her line of work. the oldest there is. Could it be possible that the Hollywood madam had some metaphysical connection to the "game show" that threatens to push the prurient carpings and prattlings of the office water cooler to heretofore unrivaled intensity?

After all, the name of this game is solicitation, a grimy city block away from prostitution and protected by some sort of grotesque businessman's legitimacy. Coincidence number two. In a true statement of intertextuality, the logical extension of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" aired on Fox at the same time as its television lottery spawn. Besides being a total caricature -- euphemistically speaking -- of the original show, and we have come to take it for granted in an age where movie plots stay similar and only the stars and maybe choice of weapons changes, the Fox show took the earlier version a step further. We already have the
millionaire, now for a mate.

So it is that a former comedian and adventurer, Richard Rockwell, who was once called Richard Balkey, is now a very wealthy man, and a motivational speaker in his spare time. And it is so that a 34-year-old Gulf War veteran nurse called Darva Conger is the lucky winner of the libidinal limbo: she was able to go lower than the rest.

Rockwell first. He is best known for portraying a character called Skippy on a 1980s California radio comedy show featuring two "surfer dudes who couldn't get dates." Conger's search for the perfect bread winner, which included  hackneyed, sublimating jaunts across the stage in swimwear, fairly reeked of distant memories, memories of the slave auction block and its mandatory and dehumanizing teeth-checking. This all unfolded at
the exact moment that the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show was being beamed to salivating pet-o-philes via USA network.

Even the most obtuse among us can uncover the irony. Now, as news reaches this desk regarding Rockwell's past exploits in abuse, restraining orders and paper wealth, well, it is nearly too much for one keyboard.  These facts have been established now. Onward, to higher ground or higher criticism, whichever comes first. The bridge of intertextuality gives passage between absurdity and gullibility. The smoke has begun to clear, and we may now begin to establish where the fire resides, and also to start in on assessing the intensity and
damage of the conflagration.

The bomb: from a society with a fetish for fetish, with a nose for trends and a mad, passionate weakness for fads, I submit that the outrage and indignation over this Honey for Money situation is greatly and self-righteously overblown.

After all, the Persian Gulf War that our heroine participated in was nothing more than the televised, computer-game version of an Oil Crusade. Kosovo, with its sterile, calculated distance-learning, was more simulation than real. This is an era where fantasy football has become as vital to many fans as the real game. Internet chat rooms overflow with "people" while the public space where one might have originally gone to meet and greet and grapple with the world is losing its charm.

Televised evangelism seems old hat now, and Reality TV, where crime becomes entertainment and vice versa, could be reaching its apex. Or is that nadir? Perceptions. This is the world where the death of Princess Diana garners the lion's share of the headlines while the passing of Mother Teresa is banished to the briefs, the churches and other dying expression outlets.

So I ask you, what's the problem?

From a society where the news brings us "Blow Job in the Ovary Office," can we do anything but applaud the audacity and boldness of this newest craze, the real-life game show? Whither the hoola hoop? Recreated in newer, more outrageous packages of bubble gum for the mind.

For that is the point of the essay, dear patient reader. Our fascination and titillation with excess cannot be denied. The upshot is that we are simply not a satisfiable group anymore. I remember in 7th grade, when I found myself alone with a girl for the first time. Breathless excitement, the endless and outright fear, and the superb mystery of the unknown. When at the end of the interlude I had managed a smattering of novice's kisses and a fumbling, frantic and largely misplaced hint of a grope in the general direction of the unmarked and unconquered regions, I remember being stunned. Taken by the excellence of the whole caper, doomed/blessed to spend the rest of the semester in contented yet fidgety awe of my 30 stolen minutes on the outskirts of "manliness."

That sort of cute, dumb stuff doesn't cut it anymore. Now they have babies between dance at the prom and toss the product in among the paper towels and the cigarette butts.

The simple point is, there is no innocence in our culture today. No reserve. No lack of freedom. No responsibility or sense of compromise with gratification's powerful impetus. Instead of taking the miracle mile step by ponderous step, we have become able to erase all inhibition, all trepidation and most of the fun of things which we should appreciate as special, sanctified, magical.

With the glut of information, pounds of pornography and its unwilling but forcefully appropriated first cousins, music, film and literature, there is just no waiting anymore. We want it now, and we get it now. Again, what's the problem? We have asked for liberation, and we have it. Deliverance from "repression" is at hand. I for one
am beginning to understand that this is possibly not all it was advertised to be, strangely.

In the cool light of day we find the recent televised revolutions in fatuousness and forwardness to be absurd, excessive, banal and demeaning. But glass houses are full of stone throwers, is it not the truth? Fire one.

The theory is that on this slippery slope of disclosure, honesty and fashioning of entertainment into everyday, quotidian dimensions, in the quest to bring the massfied masses entertainment that it can identify with, the fact is that the average cat doesn't identify as well with subtlety. Excess is in. Moderation is for pussies, squares, nerds.

In order to continue this ratcheting-up of spectacle -- remember, the ratings for these ridiculous shows are more than passable -- the good denizens at Fox (a whole essay on this symbol and purveyor of decay one day, hereby emphatically promised) had to lie. They had to embarrass us and cajole us into reacting with predictable indignation at the insistence that love, not money, was at stake in this hyperpageant. By tapping into the force of popular disavowal and disgust, the network made a stroke of heinous genius. If it's too obvious, we wouldn't fall for it, because we are well-versed in the obscene, the lascivious and the sourly sublime. If the killing isn't "realistic," we pooh-pooh the movie. If the rock lyrics are too nice or cute, we don't consider the song "meaningful" many times.

Let us react strongly, or not at all. And the old style of entertainment, best characterized by the much-maligned '50s shows "Father Knows Best" or "Leave it to Beaver," does not satisfy our lust for real lust, does not come close to reality for us.

Our past follows closely behind, and as soon as present is past, it becomes retro, fashion, ridiculed and yet commodified into another pet rock, mood ring, bell-bottomed, clumpy shoe, blue eye-shadowed nightmare. Real rockers still hate disco. Modernity's minions revive it and revel in it. More on that some other day. Back on task.

Excess, access and a refusal to use tradition for anything but a joke or a party hook, certainly not any restraint or philosophical morality lesson.

Which brings me to Tom Landry, finally.  The passing of one of the greatest examples of rectitude that the 20th century has been able to muster comes at an exquisite time for the critic. For it is in relief that the gulf between folks like  Landry and Mr. Rockwell -- a porno "scriptwriter's" dream, where nomenclature is concerned -- is most pronounced.

Tom Landry was a quiet man, nearly introverted. His steely-eyed glare and fabled discipline made him famous in a business of steely-eyed, disciplined lion tamers. He was principled, reserved, traditional and dignified. Stop at that last word please. Dignified. Dressed impeccably if conservatively, the Man in the Funny Hat was anything but funny. He was dedicated to football, to his God, and to doing all the grand things he accomplished with men beyond the game of football with a certain dignity. He was the most noble example of dignity, of quiet and consistent effort, that this world can conjure.Beyond football and his 29 years as the only coach the Dallas Cowboys ever had (until the Fall, and the travesties of most recent times)  Landry exemplified to millions what it meant to be a man. That is, before "being a man" had been deconstructed and politically challenged to the point of the same excess characteristic of the university academy. Before it was still OK to be a man, that is.

He never lost his cool, never made an uncalculated risk on the field, never berated his players publicly and could always be counted on for aplomb, protocol and again, a dignity that one can only build over a series of experiences, here called 75 years of life.   Landry was a hero, but heroes are sandwiches in this time of the enlightened Philistine. Today's heroes are yesterday's anti-heroes.

So the bright-burning, short-glowing coals, the shooting stars in the stratus of modern entertainment, fire by us, and we hesitate to tale the time to understand the significance of Landry's passing.

It is true that every culture has its highs and lows of culture. For every Aida there is a cockfight. For every Mozart there is a Kid Rock. For every Citizen Kane there is a Dumb and Dumber. Each of these offerings of pop and other culture has its worth. I do not pretend to tell that an immersion in NPR, Renaissance art and tofu is
altogether natural or sustainable. It is obvious to me that spectacles like the Million-Mama March are part of the great variety and range of products and artifacts our dizzyingly contradictory culture will leave behind. So be it.

We hammer away drunkenly at trivia machines in bars while the elections and presidential debates go on in the background, unchecked and unwatched. More people vote for NBA All-Stars than for their local government candidates.

And yet there are serious happenings afoot, and there are come citizens who do their part to be informed, active and empathetic.

This is not the end of the world. We do not have the skill to imagine such, much less impact it. But one must heed the warnings, which are that the human is a creature of habit, and seems to show an alarming propensity toward replication, repetition and reification. Internalization becomes naturalization becomes rote and routine.

It would be a pity if we wasted our resources, failed to draw and toe the line separating our serious socialization from the distracting and superfluous influences of escape, trivia, humor, the unusual and
the silly. But it may be that our entertainment fetishes are barometers in the end, measurements of what is considered important.

There has been considerable distance gained from the ancient Survival Stage of humankind and its modern epochal counterpart, the Luxury Stage. While previously defined in large measure by our work, the scuttling crabs of this sand dune have now become increasingly symbolized by their off-time pursuits.

In the wake of the death of a hero, it would cause this opinion great shame and pain to admit that short-term Vaudevillian excess has become more than just the filler in low, dull moments. If the chaff becomes wheat, if the mortar of human bricks is comprised of the trivial instead of the substantial, we cannot possibly stand for much self-righteous naysaying about the Boob Tube's latest tumescent spillage. That would be tantamount to
disavowing one's biology. We are the offspring, after all. DNA test, anyone?

And if that heartfelt intellectual treatise does not do the Rumba on your shallow conscience, try this poetic ode to marketing motifs and strange bedfellows.

Sex sells.
Love has no price.
Sex brings babies.
Love makes families.
Sex is thrilling.
Love is fulfilling.
Sex is physical.
Love is emotional.
Television brings ratings.
The remote control brings...
peace and quiet.

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