By Count Friedrich von Olsen
I try to avoid beating on dead horses but in this case the subject has me so vexed that I cannot help myself. I speak of course of the recent travail of Lamar Odom…
I scarcely knew who he was. In fact I may not have known anything about him at all. You see, I am a European by birth but an American by naturalization. Before moving to the United States more than half of my lifetime ago, I cannot remember now whether I even knew about basketball or that the sport even existed. In my youth I never played it, had no consciousness of it whatsoever and I think I might not even have taken notice of it until after I had been living in the United States for several years. I became something of a baseball fan very early on because someone once told me that to understand America and Americans, one had to understand baseball. I became, in fact, a student of that game. But I hardly noticed that the sport of basketball even existed. That is not to say that I do not respect the practitioners, the participants, of the sport. Lord knows it must be wonderful exercise, running up and down the court with the intensity and ferocity that the players do. But I am no fan of the game, know nothing about the sport to speak of and would not presume to pontificate about it in any way. For the purpose of writing this article, which has Lamar Odom as its subject, I consulted with my chauffeur Anthony, who is something of a basketball aficionado and steeped in the pastime…
What Anthony told me was that Mr. Odom was indeed a very good player, remarkable for the intensity of his play and his athleticism. What Anthony said was he demonstrated a praiseworthy lack of selfishness in his play such that he was not a glory hog but a team player content to devote his athleticism to making it so his teammates would excel and score. In this way, Anthony told me, Mr. Odom was far less egotistical than many other players. He also informed me that in recent years Lamar had gained far more attention for being married to a reality television program star – Khloé Kardashian – than for his exploits on the basketball court. The tempestuousness in this relationship, I was told, led to last week’s debacle…
With little more knowledge than that and no insight, really, into Mr. Odom’s life or personality, I am greatly disturbed by what took place last week. I see a man, full of promise, with advantages, fame, youth, health, opportunity and wealth. How and why would he squander all that in the way he did? What I am told is that in the last couple of years, he had dropped off of the top rung of the American professional basketball circuit and was playing for a team in one of my old stomping grounds – Spain [where in my day, to the best of my recollection, there were no basketball teams]. And though he is now in his mid-thirties and nearing the typical retirement age for a basketball player, I am told that there was yet a possibility – given his athleticism and the unselfish ethos of his play – that he might yet return to the basketball courts of the NBA. Instead, he chose to lay in at some suite in a Nevada brothel, choke down, if the news reports are to be believed, fifteen times the normal male dosage of an aphrodisiac interspersed with enough cocaine to throw a horse into cardiac arrest to the point that he collapsed on the ground at death’s very door, foaming at the mouth. He was rushed to a medical center and given all the proper revivification but, I am told, there is the grave possibility the normal function of both of his kidneys is lost or at best permanently compromised, rendering it unlikely he will ever mount to the athletic heights that were once his personal province…
I am an old man and long, long ago, more than twice the lifetime of some mature adults with whom I now share this planet, intoxicants of any sort lost their allure for me. I am not a teetotaler, exactly, as I will take an aperitif now and then and I will drink some strong beverages at weddings and funerals and wakes. But I prefer the sober state. One hopes that impressionable youth, those who may have idolized Mr. Odom for his athletic prowess, will see in what has now befell him a lesson of some sort. One hopes they will seek to avoid his fate rather than emulate his actions…
Yet I am not sure that my hope will be fulfilled. Some may see in Mr. Odom’s descent into dissolution something fascinating. They too may seek to, in a phrase I have heard, chase the dragon. They will see in the road of excess the promise of adventure that has eluded them in their normal lives…
As I said, I am a naturalized American and I am a proud American because I love America with all my heart and I love it in a way – dare I say this? – that native born Americans cannot love her. I have seen many other parts of the world and I know America’s beauty. I know her desirability. I know her superiority. I know this not because it was drilled into me by some schoolmarm but because I have lived with and in and through the disadvantages, the restrictions, the ugliness of other nations. Because of my love for America I am reluctant to speak ill of her, to criticize her, to in any way detract from her. But I somehow feel prompted to speak what is in my mind…
If there is an ugliness in America, it is this: its citizens’ slavish adulation of celebrity. In Europe, we were and still are, in many ways, crippled by our loyalty to royalty. Over there, though it is now dying out, there is, or was, the divine right of kings. People are, or were, ranked socially by birth. America is different. There are no kings. There is no royalty. In America, we are all equal. In America, I am neither better, nor worse, than anyone else. In Europe it is different. Over there, I am better than nearly everyone else. I am, after all, a Count. I inherited my status from my father. You will notice I have not given it up. But, just between us, gentle readers, I am a little bit embarrassed by what I am. I am ashamed, really, that simply by my accident of birth, I, in Europe anyway, am accounted to a higher status simply because of my title. I did not earn it, but it is nevertheless mine. There is something wrong with that…
In America, as I said, there is no royalty, at least officially. But, alas, in America there is unofficial royalty. Who are those royals? Our celebrities…
Khloé Kardashian is a princess and Lamar Odom is a prince. Why? Because they are celebrities. They are famous for being famous. In researching to write this article, I brushed up on a few things. One of them was Lamar Odom. The other was Khloé Kardashian. In the last case I’m not sure brush up is the right phrase for a couple of reasons. One of those reasons? There isn’t much to brush up on. I tried hard to find out what it is that is at the root of Khloé Kardashian being a celebrity. I tried real hard. I don’t know any more now than when I started. She is a nice enough looking girl, although not exactly my cup of tea. But nice looking, nonetheless. Still the world is full of nice looking girls. How does she merit being a celebrity? Damned if I can figure it out. She is famous, like I said, for being famous. That’s it. But her celebrity status gives her influence and I find that worrisome and dangerous. If someone is to have influence, I want there to be substance to them. I want to be able to define why people are swayed by them, what the rationale is. I want them to have gravitas. That there is this rampant and numerically overwhelming mentality that grants celebrities influence simply because they are famous or popular or well known or celebrities, in my mind, cheapens us, detracts from us, robs us, deculturalizes us….
And the danger? That like lemmings we will line up behind these empty vessels of celebrity and imitate them, mindlessly, without considering what we are doing, without considering the consequences, without weighing the merits, but simply because we want to be just like someone who is famous…
If there is to be celebrity, I want it to be universal. I am reminded that we are all precious, every last one of us. Everyone is someone’s son, or daughter, mother or father, brother or sister. Everyone has some facility, some capacity, some talent, some facet, some feature that is absolutely unique. If you ever look around and see someone and you have fooled yourself into thinking you are better than that person, then you have fooled yourself. It doesn’t matter if you are smarter, or taller, or handsomer, or prettier, or more talented or more experienced or a better chess player, because I will guarantee you, I will bet my castle in Germany against your house [and I am not a gambling man, but I will win] that if you look long enough or hard enough you will find something about that person superior to you. He or she will be able to do something you can’t do or at least do it better than you can. I don’t know what it will be – swim, ride, play the harmonica, cook, draw, play backgammon, sing, cinch knots, tune pianos, do pull-ups, fish, tell jokes, weave, skip rope, type, program computers, count, see, plant, bandage, brew tea, dig up weeds, golf, hear, climb, massage, sleep, arm wrestle, play bridge, run, proofread, run backwards, replace fuses, smell fire or maybe nothing I can list, but that person will put you in your place on something….