Word: loser
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...loser's values had to be in the right place, but they also had to suggest that society's were in the wrong place. Muhammad Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title because he refused the draft, to protest the Vietnam War. He wasn't a hero to everyone, but people recognized the gesture...
...main requirement for the beautiful loser is that society must value him, must impute virtue for no reason other than that he fails in a sincerely believed-in, preferably noble cause. When was the last time one saw that? Before the 1980s, there was a public shame attached to too much success. That attitude was useless and irrational but also sweet-natured and not unhealthy. The underlying idea was that failure was something potentially good for you and for everyone, that rejection and loss were not only personally inuring but that losing was also a sign of high and admirable...
Even the makers of the Douglas movie could not bear to leave their hero a beautiful loser forever. At the end of the picture, there he is--clean-shaven, writing his new and tidy novel, his new wife and child emerging from his new car--all seen from a vast picture window in a new house so full of sunlight it makes one long for slush...
There is, sad to say, only one beautiful heroic mess of a man left in the land. It is Rodney Dangerfield, who claims to have received a sweepstakes letter that read, "You may already be a loser." Rodney also says that when he enters an elevator, the operator asks, "Down?" Looks like...
...situation of a child killing another child but also because the larger context of the story seems to connect to so many other problems in the country." The prolific Rosenblatt wrote this week's Essay as well, on our winner-take-all society's lost appreciation for the beautiful loser...