A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [50]
“Oh, Jesus, Pucky. People have gladly traded their freedom for a web site. Everything, everything is going to be packaged and merchandized so they won’t ever have to get up off the couch again. You’ve heard the rappers…
“Oh, woe is me,
Cop on the beat, mean mother,
I’m in pain without gain,
So, listen up, brother,
And listen up, dykes
I’ll slash you for yo
Nikes!
“You want me to support this noise?” he continued. “You want me to support so-called artists floating livers in bottles of urine and calling it art? Where are the men and women who write for the stage? A single American play a year might get through to Broadway. Not a single goddamned play in twenty-five years. Jesus Christ, Superstar…that’s a musical?
“Listen up, Pucky, they are going to do up Broadway soon. Down with the hookers! Down with the pimps! Down with dealers! Down with the storefronts going out of business every week! Down with all the freaks! We are going to have us a sanitized, packaged, merchandized Broadway. When they run the faggots out of Forty-second Street, we’re gonna have Walt Disney’s itchy-clean Broadway…a place where a man can take his wife and kids into itchy-clean T-shirt shops.”
For the first time Darnell had heard his boss passionate about something other than his computers. Thornton knew he was on the leading edge of a revolution for the minds of the people, one where instant gratification and not knowledge dug from deep places was going to be the rule. Thornton was dedicated to some kind of sterilization of society.
“I heard a golden-voiced man sing at Juilliard last night,” Pucky said as if in a trance. “He’s no chance without a scholarship because the tuition doesn’t cover a crippled wife and two children, and unless we provide it, we may have lost a new Pavarotti.”
“We’ve already got one. Who needs another one?”
“Thornton. Musicians and writers and most artists are the least greedy people in the world. Because they cannot function without support, what do we do? Every culture since man began has supported its creative heritage.”
“Can’t you see, woman, we’ve been shedding this past year by year. It’s a new scheme of things. So what is it, Pucky? Have we abandoned the writers or have the writers abandoned us? Revivals are going clear back to the Student Prince—à la mode. Or would you prefer a British tête-à-tête? The writers are all making more money filling up time desperately on a hundred and fifty channels. Money is good! Writers never had money. So, my dear, give unto Disney what is Disney’s and sweep Times Square clean and have little fairy princesses passing out gumdrops on Forty-second Street.”
Pucky was ashen. He had too much truth in his words, but damned if she would stand by quietly watching during a cultural collapse.
Now Darnell Jefferson jumped in. “Wait! Wait!” he cried. “I’m getting a vision. Pawtucket has just opened a ten-plex movie house. I go to the movies. What picture? Eight of them are buddy-uddy cop bang-bang films that must gross twenty million on the first weekend or die. Ah, at last a picture I want to see, badly. Passenger plane, a 747, off course, transatlantic flight. Somehow a half dozen terrorists get aboard with breakdown plastic guns. There is a case of deadly virus stored in the luggage compartment. If, oh God, the canister is found and opened by the vile terrorists…good-bye East Coast of America. The president of the United States is informed in his bad left ear while dozing in a reception line. Call a scramble to sitcomm.comm.comm.org, orders the president over the head of his chief of staff, Field Marshal Stoopnagel. Scramble the fighter planes of the famous Asshole Squadron. Shoot the motherfucker down if it gets closer than fifty miles off the coast. A sweet, innocent little girl in row twenty-two brushes the hair of her Barbie doll. ‘I’m going to see my daddy in Sing Sing.’”
Pucky and Thornton caught their breath and waited for Darnell to quit ranting. He didn’t. “Wait a minute, is this the movie where the poison was going to destroy