My lengthy post on book signings reminded me of the reason I created Prowess. Many of us will never get to show our genuine, personal appreciation to these great conservatives with whom we are infatuated. We must do it in writing: to them directly or on a site like this and hope that they read and get a small sense of what they mean to us.
We realize that our idolatry of them is more meaningful than the worship of actors or even musicians. When people develop a crush on an actor, what they are really falling for are the actor's characters. It is often disappointing to watch an interview with an actor where one sees how he/she really talks, moves, dresses, and all the other differences between him/her and the character. In fact, the only genius of an actor is the ability to pretend to be interesting while on camera. Most of them are rather dull personalities in real life. Either that or they're talking to aliens, sympathizing with communists, and using whatever drugs they can acquire.
Even with a musician, it is the performance and style that enamours us, not the musician as a person. Half the time, they haven’t even written the song for which we love them. When they have, the song exists as a work of fiction they perform over and over because the audience enjoys it. The song lyrics may give only a small sliver of what the musician thinks or feels about something. Even then, it is subject to fabrication. My favorite singer once said that she has often exaggerated the circumstances when writing lyrics drawn from her personal experiences because "it made the song better." When we’re dealing with entertainers, the only part of the artists’ personalities that we admire is the part that pertains to their art.
However, with our beloved conservative commentators, talk show hosts, and authors, it is exactly their personalities that attract us. We see who they really are and what they really think...about almost everything. The philosophies they espouse, their processes of reaching them, and their methods of expressing them are inseparable from these individuals’ true dispositions. They also inadvertently reveal many personal details about themselves to us through their years of writing or talking on the airwaves. So our affection (and in some cases desire) for them is much more authentic and meaningful.
This brings me to the motto of Prowess, which is the wonderful fact about fantasies:
No matter if these people never meet us or meet us and can't stand us, no matter how popular they are or how powerful they are, we can fantasize about them to our heart's delight, and there's not a damn thing they can do about it.
We realize that our idolatry of them is more meaningful than the worship of actors or even musicians. When people develop a crush on an actor, what they are really falling for are the actor's characters. It is often disappointing to watch an interview with an actor where one sees how he/she really talks, moves, dresses, and all the other differences between him/her and the character. In fact, the only genius of an actor is the ability to pretend to be interesting while on camera. Most of them are rather dull personalities in real life. Either that or they're talking to aliens, sympathizing with communists, and using whatever drugs they can acquire.
Even with a musician, it is the performance and style that enamours us, not the musician as a person. Half the time, they haven’t even written the song for which we love them. When they have, the song exists as a work of fiction they perform over and over because the audience enjoys it. The song lyrics may give only a small sliver of what the musician thinks or feels about something. Even then, it is subject to fabrication. My favorite singer once said that she has often exaggerated the circumstances when writing lyrics drawn from her personal experiences because "it made the song better." When we’re dealing with entertainers, the only part of the artists’ personalities that we admire is the part that pertains to their art.
However, with our beloved conservative commentators, talk show hosts, and authors, it is exactly their personalities that attract us. We see who they really are and what they really think...about almost everything. The philosophies they espouse, their processes of reaching them, and their methods of expressing them are inseparable from these individuals’ true dispositions. They also inadvertently reveal many personal details about themselves to us through their years of writing or talking on the airwaves. So our affection (and in some cases desire) for them is much more authentic and meaningful.
This brings me to the motto of Prowess, which is the wonderful fact about fantasies:
No matter if these people never meet us or meet us and can't stand us, no matter how popular they are or how powerful they are, we can fantasize about them to our heart's delight, and there's not a damn thing they can do about it.
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