It’s scary out there.  Watch out for free-floating name-calling and judgments about your ethnicity, how you live your life, your childhood, and, as always, what you wear.  No, this isn’t merely Oscar red carpet stuff.  This is Natalie Portman parading her very pregnant unwed motherly self on the Oscars and thus being a poor role model for young girls.  This is about drunken Dior uber (yes uber) designer John Galliano captured on video saying he admired Adolf Hitler at a Parisian bar while warning a presumed Jewish woman that only a few short years ago her “kind would have been gassed.” Or “Two and a Half Men” creator Chuck Lorre snidely being referred to as “Chaim Levine” by Charlie what’s his name.  Or Rep. Michelle Bachmann calling the Obama administration a “gangsta” government (okay, “gangster” but we know what was meant).  Or potential US presidential candidate Mike Huckabee announcing the president grew up in Kenya (uh, Hawaii), with his father (only met him once), wasn’t in the Boy Scouts or the Rotary Club like most of us in the US (they weren’t big in my hometown of the Bronx, NY either), and had misinformation about the Mau Mau Revolution that caused him to think…. Well, the important words in that sentence are OBAMA and MAU-MAU, get it???   Yes, that’s editorializing but I’m pretty sure I’m right.  And this is a blog.

For good measure let’s throw in MSNBC’s Snidely McSnide Chris Matthews asking Bachmann on election night if she’d been “hypnotized” when her answers seemed canned.  Or Kathy Griffin joking she wanted to “take down” Bristol Palin, only to then be called a “bully” by her Mama Grizzly mom Sarah.  Of course, Sarah was called a Bully and “Cruella” several months ago when she skinned a moose live on TLC by Aaron Sorkin on the Huffington Post, so maybe that’s a wash.

The point is —  never let it be said I’m not as fair and balanced as Fox News or any other cable station in America.

I haven’t even gotten to any of the Oscar dresses.  (And I won’t).  Or the fact that none of the out of shape and ill-wardrobed men on the red carpet ever ever seem to get criticized for what they wear unless they actually decide to put on a dress as Matt Stone and Trey Parker did at the Oscars one year.  What’s that about?

Has it ever been this bad?  Probably.  It can easily be argued there is more bile-like vitriol available because everything now can be You-Tubed, Facebooked, Twittered, digitally remastered and recorded into oblivion.   And every gas-baggy, fire-breathing, ready to cast the first stone hypocrite (yes, that’s all many of us) is ready to hurl the first insult.  Why anyone believes they can even have sex in private is beyond me.  And those who still think you can go on a website anonymously and get it – well – does anyone really think that still?  Or as Dr Drew Pinsky might say, “then you want to be caught?”  And as Dr. Phil might then answer, “And how’s that workin’ for ya?”

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

You can’t even fix a $65 million musical like “Spiderman: Turn off the Dark” in private anymore without the whole world knowing it.  The new musical’s opening has now been postponed another four months to July, making this the longest recorded preview in the history of the world.  Even longer than the Watergate hearings but shorter than the time it took to make and release any one of the “Spiderman” films and much less expensive, so that’s something, I guess.

I grew up as a member of at least four religious, ethnic and social minorities by my count  (gay, Jewish, short, not much interested in sports) as well as at least two majorities (male and white).  Do the math and that still makes me more in the minority than most people.  But given that status, I can honestly say as a middle-aged person (well, yeah, because I plan to be on Willard Scott’s Smuckers jar one day!) that I don’t recall it being this relentless, this bad, this out-of-control in your face.  Oh sure, I heard the occasional sniggering about being “queer” as a teenager.  But that word is no longer considered a pejorative, since in our post racial, post-sexual age, minorities have adopted the language of the oppressor.  Meaning gay people today proudly proclaim to be “queer.”  Just as Black people are allowed to call each other the “n” word.  Which reminds me of that famous “Saturday Night Live” sketch where Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor freely threw various ethnic epithets at each other, only to meet at a very uncomfortable impasse when the White person (Chase) decided to fling back the “n” word at Pryor.   Watching it even now I get jittery, which is why I suppose Pryor really was one of our true comic geniuses because it’s also very uncomfortably funny.

Not to downplay the contributions of Chevy Chase, in case he’s reading, which I’m sure he’s not, because he’s busy working in the hit cringe comedy “Community” now, and still on NBC.

Call me lucky or sheltered, and maybe I was, but it wasn’t till I was in my twenties in Chicago that I ever heard my first honest-to-goodness blatant name-calling epitaph.  I’m sitting at a busy outside coffee shop on Michigan Ave when two Chicago businessmen, sitting as close to me right now as you are to your computer screen, casually converse about the days events.  I’m hearing snippets of their conversations until one clearly said, “Yeah, and then the guy tries to Jew me down.  You believe it.  He tries to Jew me down!!”

Rewind the tape, please.

…Oh, I heard it right?

Really?

I can remember plain as the cursor on your keyboard stopping, looking at them casually continuing their conversation and wondering, maybe I was wrong.  But I wasn’t.  Because I can still hear it.  Again.  And again.  Every time I think about that day.

With so many outlets to hear so many words these days, I can’t imagine how much hurtful, untrue or marginalized epithets people in their twenties are hearing.  Not to mention those 17, or 15, or 13, or 12 or under.  I’m a liberal  (oops, a fifth minority?).  And I’m not a parent.  But even people who are many, many, many decades away from having their face on a Smuckers jar like me, can wonder, has it really come to this?  Can we maybe dial it down a few notches, perhaps do just a tad better than we’ve been doing?

As one of my friends once joked to me, or perhaps I once joked to one of my friends,  “They can put a man on the moon but with 1539 channels, you’d think I could find something decent to watch on TV.”

Not decent like the council of morality, censorship, core value, American, apple pie decent.  Just a little less manipulative and a little bit more honest.   And maybe not so —- mean?

We can have one or two remarks in private because really, let’s not fool ourselves.  And comedians and artists should probably be exempt.  But as for the rest of us – think about it.   I haven’t mentioned Cong. Gabrielle Gifford’s shooting in Arizona or its many causes because maybe it’s connected (or isn’t) and maybe I don’t need to.  This is more about pollution.  Intellectual pollution.  And the warming is global and coming from all sides.

When I try to imagine myself on the streets of Egypt I am loath to admit I am a 2011 coward.  Not that I didn’t Act Up and fight AIDS or as a teenager attend anti-war rallies to stop the Vietnam War.  But that was prior to the age of suicide bombers, fatwas against Salman Rushdie, domestic anthrax attacks and Tom Cruise movies where a practically microscopic mechanical gadget could kill you quicker than you could say Scientology (speaking of which – 34 years, Oscar winner Paul Haggis?  Really?).

Which leads me to Lady Gaga getting all kinds of crap for having a bunch of dancers carry her into the Grammys tucked inside a translucent human sized Lucite egg and emerging from it after a reported 72 hour off and on stay only to sing her new single, “Born This Way.”

Being a left wing, Jewish homosexual, a closet provocateur despite my overriding personal cowardice, and a fan of overachieving ethnic girls from New York City who had trouble fitting in during high school, I’m willing to cut Gaga some slack.  (Some might say given those characteristics it is not at all surprising I’d feel this way.  Especially since I was  born this…well, never mind).

Actually, I’m going to cut her more than slack.  I’m going to take a 2011 courageous stand and say  — if you thought what she was doing was a bit much –  why do you think that?  Oh, It’s embarrassing?  Gratuitously attention getting?  Tacky?  A spectacle?  Of course it is.  On the red carpet on a televised music awards show – the kind of place where Jennifer Lopez wore the naked dress (2000 Grammys); Kanye West grabbed the microphone from a 17 year old singer accepting an award because he thought she shouldn’t have won (2009 VMAs); Mary J Blige showed up wasted with oversized sunglasses and a large white hood over her head (Grammys  – I don’t remember which year but trust me, it happened); and Diana Ross played with Lil Kim’s breast (VMA’s1999). In that company, I found the egg spectacle tame and sort of fun  – or as I unabashedly posted on Fadebook re Gaga’s emerging from the egg to sing her anthem – “she was the only one in on the yolk.”  That line now falls flat but did sort of seem amusing genius amusing at the time.

With a googol (the number, not the search engine) media outlets these days, you have to at least try to be inventive to sell your wares and get the word out.  If you’re a girl you can’t out Kim Kardashian, Kim Kardashian (and why would you?).  If you’re a guy, you can’t ever try to be as good-looking as Brad Pitt or as smart as  Stephen Hawkings or as rich and smart as Bill Gates.  You have to be as ________ as you can possibly be at __________ , using all of the _____________  you have at your disposal.  Or as Judy Garland is once credited as saying:  “Be a first rate version of yourself, rather than a second rate version of someone else.”  It’s just the 2011 version of Barbra Streisand’s screen version of Fanny Brice being ordered by Florenz Ziegfeld to dress like a beautiful,  bride-like showgirl and, deciding not to compete, stuffing a pillow under her dress and pretending she was pregnant, causing the audience to laugh uproariously at the spectacle rather than laughing uproariously at her in the number  she was ordered to sing – “His Love Makes Me Beautiful.”  (Times have actually changed in some respects.  Divas requirements these days are not being told what to do and certainly not listening).

Just as Gaga decided she wanted to be inside an egg and –- hatch (a shameful self-promotion for a single called “Born (Hatch) This Way” – get it??), most of the great commercially successful people in the world have figured out a construct to be a larger version of who they are inside – Madonna was a naughty Catholic school girl who borrowed heavily from, well, many people.  Scorsese and Spielberg admit to appropriating/recreating shots from John Ford and others and why wouldn’t they?  (So did all your other favorite directors at some point from those who came before them).  People in Egypt who want freedom and democracy have certainly been influenced by imperfect Western culture/democracy.    But their brand of it will be yet another permutation that in some ways might look like ours, but isn’t ours.  Nor should it be.  Especially when lives still hang in the balance and our own economy still teeters on the brink of collapse (or at least elongated bending).

Which brings me to my landlord – who is remodeling our duplex and the two apartments above the garage and NEVER lets us know in advance if workmen will arrive at 7:30am with jackhammers and drills, tearing apart the upstairs, bulldozing our backyard, cancelling the gardener or ripping out our backyard fence, which is the only safety net standing between our frolicking dog and the cars rushing down the streets.  After the sixth phone call about all this, his “assistant” phoned and said “he told me he called you back and left a message.”  I abruptly replied, “he’s lying,” only to find out the next day that he left  a quick message on my partner’s voicemail.  I immediately felt guilty for my outburst, feared I’d lose my apartment, and  thought I should apologize.  Until I thought, what about the five others that weren’t returned prior?  Shouldn’t I be standing up for myself in some form?  It’s not Cairo but isn’t the principal the same?   Even though I’m now regretting the nerve to compare the two and even though you roll your eyes, just laughing at me for doing it, doesn’t it all start from the same place on some academic level?  Standing up for yourself?  Not being cowed?  Not being conned?  Being who you are?

Which finally brings me to what I heard from a sort of idol of mine I recently got to meet at friend’s birthday party – Jane Fonda.  No, we don’t hang together (are you kidding?)  But my friend does and he knew how I admired her politics, her boldness and acting talent, so he sat me next to her at this big party (yes, she looked fabulous, I mean, it’s Jane!).  After bending her ear about everything I could while making sure I actually let her speak to others, I casually mentioned how far the world now was from the values and idealism of the sixties and how, if it frustrated me, it must drive her crazy.  She considered this, looked me square in the eye and said (paraphrasing) “Some people are born with a global platform, some have a national or local platform, and some have one in the action of their day-to-day lives.  And you never know how change happens and which will be the most important. But change will happen eventually.  I might not be around to see it, but you might.  That’s why it’s so important to take a stand in your everyday life and see what happens.”

It kind of makes you want to go outside, find a red carpet somewhere, put on your favorite outfit and crack an egg.  Or, if you’re just not in the mood, cheer on someone else who is doing it.