The election of Culifornia’s Gropenfuhrer<\/I> has spawned many articles about the One thing you learn from it, besides such pregnant details as <\/P> Weissmuller had a face off the front porch of the Parthenon. He was a natural to In Europe, the eyebrows of the highbrows were raised in derision at America’s culture of <\/P> The advantage has long since disappeared. If there were any question of 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-412","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-6E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nmeet-cute of fame and power, most recently Anthony Lane’s Talk of the Town piece,
\nPurdom’s Week in Review piece,
\nYork Times. As Der Gropenfuhrer<\/EM> settles into Sacramento, we’re bound to
\nsee many more like them. But the ur-text of that meet-cute is a very funny 1992 British
\ntelevision series, “Fame in the 20th century,” later rebroadcast by PBS, which is unlikely to be
\nimproved upon for the wisdom it offers.<\/P>
\n
\nHitler’s theatrically clever idea “to enter a rally always from the rear of the
\nauditorium, so that he appeared to emerge from among the people as the expression of their
\ndesires, the embodiment of their dreams about a better fate,” is how far Uncle Sam has come since
\nthe days when:<\/P>
\n
\nPower was in Washington and fame was in Hollywood. The only fully
\nequipped American superman was in the movies: Tarzan of the Apes, [whose] ape-call was based
\non a Tyrolean yodel. If Johnny Weissmuller, like his parents, had been born in Germany, he would
\nhave provided Hitler with a stunning example of what the master race looked like with its
\nclothes off. But Weissmuller was raised in America and got the job of Tarzan instead. …
\n
\n
\nplay king of the jungle. In one low-budget movie after another he fought to gain the upper hand
\nover Tarzan’s deadly enemy — the dialogue. … This was where dreams of omnipotence belonged:
\nin dreamland. The king of the jungle was a sportsman turned actor and the jungle he was king of
\nwas a hundred yards across at its widest point. Everybody was enchanted and nobody was fooled
\n…<\/P>
\n
\ndaydreams. But there was one big advantage in confining daydreams to culture. It kept them out
\nof politics.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\n
\nthat, Der Gropenfuhrer<\/EM> will doubtless try his mighty best to make sure it has
\nvanished forever. But to wish us back to the dreamland days of Johnny Weissmuller and the
\nTarzan era, as though they were a model of sanity, is too ridiculous to contemplate. Has anybody
\ngot a better idea?<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"