Not to take the side of the tiger but I think Roy Horn, half of the Las Vegas duo Siegfried & Roy, had it coming. Roy was attacked by his favorite pet tiger the other day during a show and is now in critical condition. All the hearts in the world go out to Roy for a fast recovery but come on: who plays with a tiger and doesn't expect to get mauled?
In another incident of pseudo-celebrities playing with fire and ultimately getting burned, Rush Limbaugh, famed right-winger and radio talk show host, has been linked to a serious pain killer scandal. The man who for the last decade has personified condescending moral authoritarianism seems to have a few skeletons in his closet. This isn't the first chink of irony in Rush's armor. His vehemence in defending family values (a noble cause) while working to succeed on his third marriage (not so good) has always been the crux of critique for Rush detractors. Still this pain killer allegation must have completely blindsided a lot of Rush supporters, maybe even the egotist himself. Either the critics were finally getting to the Teflon man or the pain of being forced off NFL Countdown -- a show he had no business being on in the first place -- drove Rush into the pits of opium derivation: Oxycontin.
And what is it about these morally righteous ultra-cons who turn out to have vices like all the rest of us? William Bennett, the godfather of virtues, revealed a few months ago that he has a very serious gambling problem. Now Mr. Bennett has forcefully stated that his gambling addiction has never once endangered his family; that he still is financially secure, and that being stricken by such a vice does not weaken his call to morals. Shall we leave it at that, or can we ask the question: should a gambling addiction be less stigmatized than a pain killer addiction? Or an alcohol addiction?
Obviously both Mr. Bennett and Mr. Limbaugh have discovered that preaching virtuosity is a tough business -- one that requires a jar of Vicodin and a stash of poker chips just to make it through the day. But does this mean that those liberal politicians/celebrities, whose morally questionable vices were revealed and condemned by these two jurors of ethics, now have their slates wiped clean? After all, the king of narcissism himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, got a free pass from fellow conservative pundits.
Arnold's sexual exploits, even the bizarre pro-Nazi rhetoric of his past interviews, were downplayed by the conservative bloc as irrelevant in the days leading up to the recall election. Still, one can't help but speculate what would have happened had the tables had been reversed, if Gray Davis -- no, the man's such a zero I can't even imagine that he'd have sexual exploits -- if Cruz Bustamante were implicated as a participant in past orgy fests. The right wing would have had a media frenzied field day. Yet when their golden boy was primed to take over the golden state, conservatives took to the defensive.
Ann Coulter, whose self-aggrandizing divineness makes a Manny Ramirez home run trot seem modest, went so far as to label these revelations of Arnold's past as a ploy by the liberal media to swing the momentum of the recall election. My goodness, is there any consistency in these arguments? Didn't this same "liberal media" rip apart President Clinton for similar sex scandals during the 1992 primaries?
Both sides of these debates -- and both sides are equally culpable -- need to stop the moral one-upsmanship and leave the preaching of virtues to our parents and religious institutions. We don't need a radio talk show host who makes $30 million dollars for a three-hour daily segment acting as if he knows the moral code to our lives. And we certainly don't need a gambling addict insisting that: "We should know that too much of anything, even a good thing, may prove to be our undoing ... [We] need ... to set definite boundaries on our appetites" ("The Book of Virtues," by William J. Bennett).
Everyone should just go on a Vioxx binge in Vegas, waste a night at the blackjack table and spend their earnings on a few female, or male (depending on your preference), escorts. That way we'd all be on the same slate and there would be an end to this morally righteous madness.
