Thursday August 02, 2007

LINDSAY LOHAN'S "COME TO JESUS" MOMENT. The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger expresses concern -- or is it contempt? It's hard to tell -- for the celebrities who take drugs, whether performance or pleasure-enhancing. At first he seems to think marketing is the culprit:

I now take it as an article of faith that marketing rules the world. Marketing is an ancient business tool, but unlike some other artifacts of the past, product marketing is a perfect fit for the age of electronic mass media. The Web has been marketing's Manhattan Project, and like Iran, everyone wants access to marketing's mysterious, sometimes dark powers...

The players became platforms outside the game for selling shoes, brands "and everything." Like Nascar drivers, the shirts of the Tour de France racers are festooned with product logos. But consumers aren't going to buy stuff promoted by any palooka. Professional athletes were tutored that part of the deal was they had to pump extra hang-time into their personalities. And if they couldn't do that, the guys making the Nike commercials would do it for them. In the early days, journalists derided this as "hype," but even the press eventually signed on, and suddenly lumpen athletes and entertainers had "attitude" and "edge." This was now admirable.

Henninger must have realized at some point that blaming the free market for Barry Bonds is a non-starter in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, so he comes to Jesus -- or, rather, swings Him at the heads of "the thousands of high-IQ people buying all those the God-Is-Dreadful books":

The simple idea that Mr. Bonds and Ms. [Lindsay] Lohan ought to go find something resembling a church to offset the compulsions of modern life drives the no-religion people nuts. If so, they should stop making funny jokes about sprinkling holy water and start proposing an alternative way to learn integrity, self-respect and character that will have a longer shelf-life than "Don't Be Evil."

Our great nation is covered with churches and filled with believers, and ruled by a fundamentalist Christian President, yet Henninger is worried about atheism's deleterious effect on Barry Bonds and Lindsay Lohan.

When I first approached his essay, I assumed that Henninger took movie stars and professional athletes as his subject because people are more inclined to read about them than Johnny Methhead or Jane Crackwhore. Now I think that if he expanded his purview to include ordinary citizens' drug habits among the horrors of atheism, it would too closely resemble a Chick Tract without the saving grace of lurid illustrations to suit the Journal's upscale clientele.

Of course, once Murdoch gets his hands on the Journal, Henninger may never need to be that cautious again.

UPDATE. Flash! Lindsay Lohan, at least, may be closer to redemption than we thought:

Christian pop culture critic Mark Dice insists he knows the cure for Lindsay Lohan’s problems. Jesus.

Dice credits himself for making Paris Hilton find ‘God’ in jail, and is now focusing his prayers on Lindsay Lohan.

“What Lindsay really needs is Jesus. She needs to read the Bible and find out who she is and why she is here. There is a vast black hole in her soul which nothing else can fill. No expensive rehab facility. No jail sentence. No family or friends. Only Jesus can fix what’s wrong” Dice explains.

Maybe Murdoch can just dump Henninger and hire Dice. He certainly has a livelier style.