Word: idol
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Shepard, premier playwright and matinee idol, fits the cowpoke boots just fine, but he is too snaky and controlled to play a tortured loser. Basinger remains an in-joke of Hollywood casting directors; 46 other American actresses could have made some emotional sense out of May, or at least sent her smoldering in mystery. Stanton, with his haunted, pinched face and chirruping alibis, steals the show--or, rather, is awarded it by default. And Randy Quaid, as a gentleman caller, is a perfect audience surrogate: decent, dogged, perplexed by a family squabble that admits no strangers to its terrible embrace...
...their immersion in heavy-breathing rock music and the erotic fantasies on MTV, one thing about American teenagers has not changed: they are in many ways just as ignorant about the scientific facts of reproduction as they were in the days when Doris Day, not Madonna, was their idol. In a study funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, Demographer Ellen Kisker of Princeton University found that teenage girls are awash in misinformation. Among the commonest myths: that they could not become pregnant the first time they had sex, if they had it only occasionally or if they had it standing...
...Kennedy who elevated elite units to matinee-idol status. He built up the U.S. Special Forces, first organized in 1952 during the Korean War, and popularized the green beret many commandos had already informally adopted as their symbol. The Green Berets' role was counterinsurgency: to defend freedom by helping developing (and pro-Western) nations ward off Communist-backed guerrilla movements. The great test was to be Viet Nam. But as the war escalated, counterinsurgency was shoved aside as the U.S. resorted more and more to conventional tactics of massed firepower. Special Forces were increasingly miscast, used as garrison troops defending...
Which brings us back to asking why a ballroom contest is so popular. Census figures quickly dispel my first theory--that the median age of Americans is actually 73. Still, there is no other prime-time show so determinedly unhip. Where American Idol has Ryan Seacrest, Dancing has Hollywood Squares' Tom Bergeron. Where Idol's Simon Cowell snipes put-downs, judge Len Goodman has such quaint British diction you could imagine him reporting from London during the Blitz. The theatrics and costumes (former New Kid on the Block Joey McIntyre jived in a G.I. outfit) would embarrass an Ice Capades...
...wedding-reception aesthetic is exactly the point. Wedding receptions, like Dancing, are carefully constructed hipness-free zones--places where it's more fun to be a fool on the floor than cool on the sidelines. Where Idol is about show-biz amateurs trying to go pro, Dancing is about show-biz pros turning amateur (there's not even a cash prize) and daring to be amateurish. Dance, for most of us, is about letting go, being inept and not caring. And Dancing, from its laughed-off missteps to its militantly dated production values, is that sentiment lustily, dorkily embodied...