[FRIAM] great man theory

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What is the quote "Methinks the lady doth protest too much"? >8^D

Dave's post held zero resentment, as far as I can tell. Maybe Steve resents. I don't and I don't think Dave does. What's at work, here, isn't resentment. It's an attempt to point out a fundamental flaw in our highly connected world ... watching as GroupThink churns from one celebrity to the next, from celebrity like Trump to the more sedate celebrity of Biden ... from the celebrity of AI to the more sedate celebrity of ML.

If we replaced the people in Dave's list with technologies, we'd see the SAME pattern.

And Dave explicitly said, and Jon remarked on, the fact that *we* make these celebrities. They're the victims. And if we want to come to terms with our highly connected world, we need to look hard in the mirror.

On 3/12/21 9:45 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> While I find the great (wo)man theory fundamentally problematic, I don't
> think criticisms like this list which reduce those who might be held up
> as such to diminished caricatures of themselves much more than snark.  
> 
> There is a big (overwhelming) component of ego involved in these
> people's success and each of our own tiny egos is threatened by any
> other ego finding success (especially spectacular success).   But *we*
> are the ones who build the foundations on which giant towers of ego are
> built.   *We* (the peoples) are the ones who project our own ego-needs
> out in such a way that the various measures of success and opportunities
> for accumulation of power (e.g. wealth, influence) end up building the
> scaffolding to elevate these people whom we so much love to hate.  
> 
> I suspect what makes these "great (wo)men" figures such good targets for
> resentment is that we see our own tiny egos reflected in their inflated
> (by attention/fame/wealth) egos?
> 
> I "grew up" with Michael Jackson in perhaps a different way than
> others.   I ran a night-time Pop-Rock show at my local AM station during
> his rise to fame.  He was one year younger than me.   The Rock Stars
> (Stones, Beatles, etc ad nauseum) of the time were already young
> adults... in many cases a decade or more older than I, and I could defer
> to their fame more easily.   Michael Jackson had just hit it big with
> his single - "Ben" which some of you may remember as being the theme
> song to a hollywood movie about a Rat named "Ben".   The movie was
> sweet, the song was sweet, etc.   I liked the tune and I had a guarded
> respect for someone "my age" being so capable vocally.   I was also
> tapped into the industry chatter about "young stars" and Jackson was a
> unique phenomena in many ways, coming up out of the shadow of his
> brothers' Jackson 5 to eclipse them.   The stories of the family dynamic
> that seems to have ultimately crushed him into the caricature of a pop
> star he became (whilst still churning out good work) were already afoot,
> alongside the other rising (and oft dysfunctional) pop phenomena of that
> time (Carpenters, Donnie&Marie, Cap'n&Tenille, etc.)  Many 60's rockers
> were already (dissolved, self-destructed, OD'd, but this younger cohort
> of wholesome(ish) pop/folk/rock singers were growing up with their older
> siblings/mentors as cautionary tales, or perhaps in a more extreme
> crucible with the exploding budget of boomer teens/young-adults for
> their music.   I mildly resented Michael's (and many of the others)
> success, but I also had a hint of his pain and knew I wouldn't trade his
> rising fame for the dysfunction that drove/shaped it.   Karen
> Carpenter's death-by-Anorexia and other events of that genre/era attuned
> me to the price many (all?) of these people were paying.  
> 
> There might be a notable exception in Linda Ronstadt who was a few years
> older than me but from the nearby city of Tucson and struggling/fumbling
> *her* way through the same waters.   I really didn't appreciate it until
> after she had lost her voice to Parkinson's a decade ago and I saw a
> documentary on the arc of her life, how dedicated to her art she was,
> and how much of that transcended the pop-rock I knew her (most well)
> for.   It might be acutely notable that while she had some fairly
> high-profile relationships (e.g. Gov. Jerry Brown, Steve Martin, Jim
> Carrey, Mick Jagger, Bill Murray, Aaron Neville, George Lucas, etc...) 
> she managed to not let any of those famous men eclipse or deflect her
> from her own professional arc, though I am sure they all influenced her
> arc in some way.  
> 
> I'm sure someone could give Ronstadt the same snark-treatment if I held
> her up as "a Great Woman", and maybe it is equally fair to note that few
> probably hold her up in that way beyond simply appreciating the great
> work she has done along the way.   I also believe to support a "Great
> Woman Narrative" that she was highly influential among her peers and
> younger musicians (especially women) and in the domain of modern
> (80s-90s?) country-rock (with a dash of mexican-hillbilly ranchera)
> thrown in.
> 
> <shaking my tiny fist>

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