The Good Kind of Entertainment

No.155: April 14, 2023

Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This publication is free for now, but please consider clicking on the button at the bottom to become a paid subscriber to enjoy this along with Monday’s “Off The Shelf” feature about books and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events.

Dear Friends,

Happy Friday!

A dozen years ago a young lady named Rebecca Black recorded and posted what is sometimes regarded as the worst song ever written. Yes, even worse than Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart,” if you can believe it. “Friday” went viral and has been mercilessly mocked ever since. She never took the video down and it currently has 165 million views on You Tube. She has a good sense of humor about it, even including it occasionally in her live performances (yes, it didn’t ruin her music career entirely). If you want to drain some brain cells, you can check it out here:

Today I discovered that a Bob Dylan impersonator recorded a cover of the song, and I laughed so hard I got tears in my eyes. Singing it with Dylan’s earnestness as an acoustic solo highlights the absurd lyrics in a whole new way:

Anyway, this was on my mind because I’ve been writing a bunch of songs and thinking maybe I should purposely write one this bad. Maybe that’s how you get 165 million views!

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You might guess by that bit of frivolity that I am rather uninspired about a lot of square inches of the world right now, and you would be right. I take an inventory of current events and nothing suggests itself as a topic for any kind of deep cultural analysis. In Wednesday’s Quarter Inch I lamented that everything is performative theater. I double-checked today and … yes, it’s still true. Everything is meaningless performative theater. We are at the “bread and circuses” phase of Imperial decline. We are a frivolous and unserious people.

A 21-year-old National Guardsman had his hands on a trove of Top Secret documents (bad enough) and leaked them to the world because he wanted to look cool for his social media friends (really bad). He was performing. And now Tucker Carlson tells us that the young man is actually a martyr being persecuted for “contradicting” the “National Security State.” He’s also performing. And the script is pre-written; whatever gets the eyeballs on the screen, hypes up your political tribe, and “owns the libs.” It would be a complete waste of time taking Tucker seriously enough to actually analyze what he says because what he says has nothing to do with analysis. His show is just one circus among many circuses, and the same is true of all the other circuses—electoral politics, for example. It’s entertainment. Sometimes dangerous and deadly entertainment. (And for you Tucker fans angry with me right now; never, ever forget that he privately thought the “stolen election” theories were ridiculous nonsense and then went on the air to lie to your face.)

The national security breach was a very serious one, but the only thing people care about is whether and how one can spin it to political advantage. And that’s one example of why I am losing interest in the daily maw of the 24/7 news cycle meat grinder. I really do feel like we are fulfilling Neil Postman’s prophecy and “amusing ourselves to death.”

One of these days, one of these years, we are going to get whacked out of our narcissism and self-absorption and we aren’t going to be ready for it. For the whole of human history people have had very real things to worry about—war, famine, pestilence, and poverty, to name a few. In the post-war era, with a few significant but short-lived blips (e.g., 9/11, COVID), we have been the singular exception to the rule. And we think this is normal. And that it will continue forever like it’s a law of the universe or running on autopilot. War? Poverty? We are consumed with—let me see—preferred pronouns and the right to castrate our children if we don’t decide to kill them in the womb first. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we are a serious people; serious about our depravity.

I suspect that I am partly just tired. When every “outrage of the day” is just a re-run of yesterday’s or last week’s “outrage of the day” it all just blurs together. Believe it or not, next Friday will mark three straight years of writing The Square Inch. There were two Fridays that I unintentionally took “off,” but other than that it has been 156 straight weeks. I don’t know if I’ll take a vacation or something, but it is a milestone worth noting and celebrating.

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Not to get all Wendell Berry on you, but truthfully the “square inches” closer to home are more stimulating for me these days, and I think that is as it should be. The “information” revolution that began with computers and the Internet didn’t just expand our experience of the world; in many instances it has royally messed up our individual, familial, and local priorities. What Tucker Carlsen says and thinks should have zero bearing on one’s life. An all-caps psychotic tirade on “Truth Social” from Donald Trump shouldn’t be a blip on anyone’s radar. There’s a great classic Internet meme of a guy at his computer saying, “Not now, honey! There’s somebody who’s wrong on the Internet!” What a perfect encapsulation of our cultural problem.

So let me share a bit about my local square inches.

Baseball season is underway and, yes, I did relent from my promise to quit forever. You may recall my dilemma; I rashly made the decision to quit without consulting my kids, and they were highly offended. So we have been watching our Minnesota Twins and they’re off to a terrific start.

Last night my brother had invited me over, and I texted him that I was planning to watch a classic horror film called “Twins in New York.” If you know the baleful history of Minnesota playing the New York Yankees, you’ll agree that that is hilarious. As it turned out, the Twins scored 9 runs in the very first inning on their way to an 11-2 romp in Yankee Stadium. I am not used to this, but it is very welcome.

The dreaded rule changes have not been as significant as feared, as far as I can see. But I will say that MLB overcorrected. The games are actually too fast. It needs more breathing room. I would propose two things: First, make the pitch clock 18 seconds instead of 15—that would probably be the sweet spot. Second, a total and complete ban on commentators even mentioning the word “clock.” The viewer has no reason whatsoever to even know there is a clock. It is only relevant to a few players on the field and we should never even be made aware of it unless there’s a violation (of which there are very few). As for the shift, I have been enjoying far better athletic play in the infield—it shouldn’t have come to the point of a rule change, but making infielders make difficult plays is good for the game.

The other thing going on around here is a lot of music. The older two girls and I now have more than enough material for a full album and we love rehearsing (sometimes late into the night) and refining our songs. Now, if these kids could stop being so ridiculously busy all the time we might start putting out some content and getting some gigs. Yeah, I know that sounds a lot like performative entertainment, but it’s the good kind—the stuff that’s supposed to be entertainment.

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Thanks for reading The Square Inch Newsletter. Have a wonderful weekend!