by Art Chantry ( art@artchantry.com)
i don’t know what’s real any more. everything i learned as a kid seems to have been a crazy lie. memory is constantly betrayed with time. so many things i actually SAW and EXPERIENCED have been totally contradicted and turned into an agreed-upon myth. at this point in my life i stand confused when i look back. nothing is real and if it is real, it ain’t what it seems. it’s like lily tomlin’s old punchline that reality is actually a hunch that we can all agree upon. to that i can add – ‘for the moment.’
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it’s like the whole penn state scandal. i mean, sports in america is the one thing EVERYBODY thought was a good thing. granted, i never did, having been a nerd and a twerp in school and supremely bad at all group sports (i blame it on lacking a fatherly influence in my childhood, of course). but, sports was sacrosanct when i was growing up – the ONE thing that was there to better all of us – to build character. it was above reproach.
it turns out that was never true. it was another lie, a falsehood, a myth. the history of sports is about competition and power – the prime breeding ground for dishonesty, cheating and corruption. this penn state thing only shows us that the old school sports myth is also a great place to hide. it’s like the old saying the last refuge of the scoundrel is religion and patriotism? well, we can add sports to that list. and then when you start to add the scandals at syracuse university – and the other less media drenched similar stories erupting around the country (there have been several local schools up here that have erupted in similar abuse scandals) the entire sports mythos structure simply crumbles. granted, it may all be a witch hunt, a panic or hysteria like the satanic cult daycare school fiasco a decade ago. but, this scandal isn’t so much about the actual perversions involved (though they seem so appropriately extreme). the real scandal is about how corrupt the sports myth has become. first the cheating, then the drugs, then the money, now THIS? our great source of commonality has fallen into the toilet.
which brings me to this image i show you. this is a children’s coloring book form 1967. who the hell was ‘dick’ blake? why is he so ‘enthralled’ with little kids? even for 1967 his appearance is a little too suave and clean-cut to avoid suspicion. what’s with that red faced shiny GRIN he displays? i mean, to say, WHY has he disappeared from popular history? who was this guy? where is he hiding today? i want to keep this guy away from all children. isn’t is amazing what history can do to what is essentially innocent?
of course, it doesn’t help at all that the very last cartoon “coloring book” panel has a simple drawing of good ol’ dickie surrounded by smiling kids. the caption (OF COURSE) reads, “goodbye mr. blake. thanks for coming.”
kill me now.
ADDENDUM:
AC:the mcmcartin daycare scandal. it started a huge rash – an epidemic – of bizarre recovered memory satanic cult crap all over the country. turns out absolutely NONE of it was true. but back then is a huge headline scandal that we followed for a year or more. the mcmartin trial was one of the longest in that state’s history. now, we would rather forget about all that. but, it happened. classic salem witch hunt crap….not a serif face, not a sans-serif face. the ultimate cop-out typeface. won’t commit. easy to hide behind….by the way, where is dickie’s right hand hiding?
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