Why Do I Have Such a Problem With Chris Ayres?

OK, first of all I don't really have a problem with Chris Ayres, just thought I'd get that out of the way, second of all, I do have a problem with the following passage from his most recent missive from our corner of the world

But, of course, we're all wiser now, even here in LA, where gullibility - or “suspension of disbelief', as Hollywood prefers to call it - is pretty much a requirement for simply getting out of bed in the morning. This is a town where it rains for two and half minutes a year, after all: human life shouldn't be possible - yet here we are, regardless. Which perhaps explains why Angelenos fall for bubbles harder than anyone else, while trying their damnedest to sell the very same hype to the rest of the world.

Suppositions without supporting evidence, there's simply no proof that Angelenos are any more susceptible to huxterism than any other part of this country, or the rest of the world, for that matter.

First, the entertainment industry is only one minor part of the overall economy here, this is not a company town, no matter how often people want to make that claim, there are sections of Los Angeles that may feel like a company town, and if you wander into a coffee house in the 'wrong' part of town, you'll be overwhelmed by the preening, self-satisfied yet oddly desperate manner of the folks hunched over their laptops or speaking too loudly into their phones. In number of employees and even overall dollar value of trade, the entertainment business is a major factor locally, but it's not everything, if anything is king in L.A., it's international trade (Port of LA's economic impact is huge), and tourism. The dream factory accounts for a lot, but its impact is not equal to trade or tourism locally, but in the popular imagination around the globe, Los Angeles is a company town.

Second (boy, that was a long first, wasn't it?), given that we've got a town full of hustlers and players and wannabes, rather than being naive and easily fooled, it tends to lend a 'been there, done that' vibe to most folks who aren't absolutely, 'fresh of the boat'. If anything, our proximity to Hollywood lends itself to less susceptibility to the various irrational exuberances that sweep over a place like Iceland or Albania.

Third, give your countryman some due. The phrase "willing suspension of disbelief" was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his philosophical work, Biographia Literia (text of Chapter XIV, here). I assume Mr. Ayres knows this, so why attribute it to "Hollywood"? Furthermore, I don't think most folks in Hollywood use the term, other than derisively to discount a work that relies on its audience willingness to suspend their belief a bit too much. But even if he's wrong about Angelenos being particularly susceptible, and even if he's wrong about "Hollywood's" use of the phrase, I think he's right to connect Samuel Taylor Coleridge's philosophical definition of poems and poetry with the inflated sense of expectations surrounding our freshly minted 44th President. Here's the first paragraph from Chapter XIV of Biographia Literaria

During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moon-light or sun-set diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such, as will be found in every village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them, when they present themselves.

I quote the whole paragraph, to give the context, but the key point is, "the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; ... And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency."

The current fervor over President Barack Obama seems to have a supernatural and delusional tinge to it. I've been poking fun at the cultishness of the faithful for quite some time, and his election and subsequent inauguration has yet to dim this adoration. For those that believe, he really is a supernatural being, and he really will be "The One", he can no sooner live up to those expectations than he can waive his magic wand and turn his own turds into gold (turning lead into gold is way too easy for a demigod, I want to see turds into gold before I choose to believe).