TARZAN AND DER GROPENFUHRER

The election of Culifornia's Gropenfuhrer has spawned many articles about the meet-cute of fame and power, most recently Anthony Lane's Talk of the Town piece, "Poll Stars," in this week's New Yorker, and Todd Purdom's Week in Review piece, "Government by Celebrity ...," in Sunday's New York Times. As Der Gropenfuhrer settles into Sacramento, we're bound to see many more like them. But the ur-text of that meet-cute is a very funny 1992 British television series, "Fame in the 20th century," later rebroadcast by PBS, which is unlikely to be improved upon for the wisdom it offers.

One thing you learn from it, besides such pregnant details as Hitler's theatrically clever idea "to enter a rally always from the rear of the auditorium, so that he appeared to emerge from among the people as the expression of their desires, the embodiment of their dreams about a better fate," is how far Uncle Sam has come since the days when:

Power was in Washington and fame was in Hollywood. The only fully equipped American superman was in the movies: Tarzan of the Apes, [whose] ape-call was based on a Tyrolean yodel. If Johnny Weissmuller, like his parents, had been born in Germany, he would have provided Hitler with a stunning example of what the master race looked like with its clothes off. But Weissmuller was raised in America and got the job of Tarzan instead. ...

Weissmuller had a face off the front porch of the Parthenon. He was a natural to play king of the jungle. In one low-budget movie after another he fought to gain the upper hand over Tarzan's deadly enemy -- the dialogue. ... This was where dreams of omnipotence belonged: in dreamland. The king of the jungle was a sportsman turned actor and the jungle he was king of was a hundred yards across at its widest point. Everybody was enchanted and nobody was fooled ...

In Europe, the eyebrows of the highbrows were raised in derision at America's culture of daydreams. But there was one big advantage in confining daydreams to culture. It kept them out of politics.

The advantage has long since disappeared. If there were any question of that, Der Gropenfuhrer will doubtless try his mighty best to make sure it has vanished forever. But to wish us back to the dreamland days of Johnny Weissmuller and the Tarzan era, as though they were a model of sanity, is too ridiculous to contemplate. Has anybody got a better idea?