Of Cosby, Crawford, and Cyrus; and what’s not so Rosy in our culture
View(s):I recently read an article in which someone named Megan Baldwin claimed, as the title of the piece went, that ‘Beyoncé Argues Convincingly for a Place in the Dictionary’. I stumbled upon it on Yahoo’s not-so-selective offerings, in a corner tagged ‘Crucial Update’, on a site named ‘Racked’. No, dear reader, I am not responsible for what you imagine might be the contents of this nugget of a web offering. But, I am sure, you will be 
interested to know that Ms. Baldwin – the budding writer and Beyoncé fan – had this to say: “Beyoncé is a majestic human who is also a noun. An acceptable synonym for Beyoncé according to Beyoncé’s chest is ‘queen bee’. It is pronounced ‘kwi:n bi:’ and appears to mean ‘I call the shots’. Winged stinging creatures are advised to take note.”
In all of the 42 words of this ‘crucial update’ on English lexicography (or is that Entertainment legends?), I couldn’t find a single convincing argument – heavens to Beyoncé, I couldn’t find a single argument. period. – which convinced me that Beyoncé deserved a place in any dictionary. Of course, the appealing image of the 33-year old singer clad in Daisy Dukes and a snug white T-shirt – on which it said, simply, ‘Queen Bee’ – may explain why the site is called ‘Racked’. Now that you’re suitably abreast of that situation, let’s proceed to some other celebrities, stars, entertainers, et al., who might make a more “convincing” case for having a noun – or a verb – racked up in their honour.
Celebrity: Bill Cosby
I have a bee (not a queen bee!) in my bonnet about Dr. William H. Cosby, Jnr., Ed. D., these days. You remember him: Cliff Huxtable – the likeable, loveable, Dr. Cliff Huxtable of The Cosby Show fame from TV’s good old days… Charming husband. Sincere son-in-law. Enthusiastic father-figure to five children. Well, dears, it seems our good doctor’s alter ego was a farce. Because, all the while he was sending out clear strong energetic messages about good parenting and solid husbandry of marriage and medical practice, he was groping groupies and raping unsuspecting young actresses with the least crush on him. Forty of them! From 1965 to 2008! Some of whom are now suing him for fondling them against their will, and other acts of coercion. Shame on him for fooling us! Shame on the young women for maintaining their silence for so long! Shame that so many more innocent unsuspecting women had to be groped and raped and generally propositioned by this powerful electronic media celebrity against whom it was almost impossible to hear a bad word spoken. Until the girls came out of hiding to expose their long-protected rapist and groper – charges on which Bill C. has remained tight-lipped about until recently.
I’m proposing we call his penchant for sinning in secret while posing as a do-gooder ‘cosby-ing’. So: Cosby, (verb): “The proclivity to use one’s powerful image or good reputation or influential office to sexually abuse trusting young people.” And then twist their arms – by design or default – into covering up for them. Hmm, to cosby-along. A hypocrisy as old as humanity! Well, I guess it might even be termed to ‘clinton’. But that was the other Bill, wasn’t it?
Star: Cindy Crawford
Recently I read (I’ve been doing a lot of reading rubbish these days, dears) that the original supermodel mom is grooming her lookalike daughter to follow in her famous mother’s footsteps. Rubbish me not: the young lady looks just like her glamorous alma mater did way back in the – oh, when was it that Cynthia Ann Crawford was discovered in obscure DeKalb, Ill., and skyrocketed to superstardom? Really; in a milieu where ‘casting couch’ was de rigueur for aspiring models, Cindy Crawford was a model aspirant to many a young lady with their eye on the main chance before her daughter. In a culture where sleeping around was par for the concourse or runway, Crawford was something of the exception that proved the rule. She once even confessed shyly that she was relatively sexually inexperienced, having dated only 13 men in all her life. (Now let’s not judge her cosmopolitan mores by our Colombo morality, shall we? Her creator – not Herb Ritts! I meant God – will be her judge.)
Be that as it may, my suggestion is this… Crawford, (noun); “To swim against the tide in a sea of amoral creatures whose pressure to conform is consciously being resisted.”
Entertainers: Miley Cyrus
I’m going to keep this short. Not because I’m not a fan of ‘twerking’. (I’m not. Really.) But because the less said about Billy Ray Cyrus’ wayward daughter the better. (Her old pa’s plaintive “achy breaky heart” might well have been caused by her strange gyrations and other gymnastic shenanigans?) But it’s not Miley’s talent at making the most of a wrecking ball – if you haven’t seen the video, don’t. – that’s attracting my attention right now. It’s her tedious, never-tiring, and ever-so-tiresome attention-seeking behaviour. Not happy with the greasy spotlight in her overtly erotic dance revues, Cyrus keeps racking her brains for ways to make the most wretched headlines for bad – no, appalling – behaviour. (Don’t let me bore you – or corrupt you – with the details, dears.)
Suffice it to say that I’m thinking of ‘Cyrus-like’, (adjective); “A tendency to draw the spotlight to oneself with egregious and salacious acts”. Oh, just a moment: I might have coined many more such neologisms in under half a minute: ‘Jennerous’, ‘Kardashing’, ‘Beyonceanic’… but you get the point.
The point of this piece has not been to titillate or titivate. Neither commend nor condemn. So carp not nor cavil awhile with me, genteel reader. And when you have got the point – that our civilization’s obsession with celebrities, stars, entertainers, et al. must be good for something – you will be able to close that window, shut that webpage, exit the browser, put down the glossy glad-rag-toting magazine … and resolve not to Cosby, Crawford, or Cyrus your way from culture to subculture to ooze and slime. Never, ever, again.
On the other hand, it might not be Twitter, Facebook, MTV, mega-bucks, multi-media, models galore on Fashon TV culture that’s corrupting our country. Look who called who names in Parliament, recently! Do you reckon either of them watch MTV – I mean, the MTV (Music Television); not the local channel? Or take the case of the egregious gang-rape in Jaffna last week that has wrenched guts and hearts around the country. Do you think the pathetic perpetrators would recognize a twerk if it gyrated in their faces? Maybe most shocking is the rape of a six- or seven-year-old in Kilinochchi at the end of this week – by minors! Whatever the underaged rapists are watching, it isn’t the Cartoon Network or wholesome children’s television. Cosby, Cyrus, & Co. are not part of their cosmos. No dears, there is something else rotten in the state of our nation these days… We won’t be able to uproot it by simply turning cable TV off – but that’s a good start. That done, we’d all do well to have a long hard think about how to get the country back to a halfway decent culture and civilization – now that the nation is inching its way back in to being a democratic republic again.