Mushnick and the cult of celebrity by Phil S. Stein - 8/11/04

The music, television and film industries all seem to be a no-holds-barred grab for the dollar. Britney Spears is more respected than Elvis Costello, Usher moves far more units than Solomon Burke and jazz? Jazz is something your grandparents may have liked. Jazz all sounds the same, today's tastes have determined.

Magazines trumpet celebrity as though it were the holy grail. Just in case you forgot, the real holy grail was thought to be nothing less than the work of G-d. Books and literature? They don't matter anymore. Sure, pandering, thriller-cum-trash like the Da Vinci Code can sell millions, but the latest Updike? Well, let's just say Rabbit has stopped Running. Politics? Politics gives cesspools bad names. At least cesspools are composed of human waste. Politics do not contain anything consumable which could be turned into waste. In the midst of this forced road to nihilism, we have to take our value where we can get it. Phil Mushnick, crotchety columnist for the New York Post, of all publications, is valuable.

For years Mushnick has railed against single-minded materialism, hypocrisy and unsportsmanlike conduct wherever it roams. He is has become like an island of sanity in a world gone mad. And it is a tribute to his clear writing and well-thought-out opinions which has earned him many fans. Sure, he targets the same issues and wrongdoers over and over, year after year. But, he does it with so much heartfelt righteousness that you can't help but come away from his columns impressed with the man's bona fides.

Mushnick was among the first to target Nike for not only corporate greed -- presaging the corporate scandals of the 1990s and early 2000s -- but for exploiting Third World labor. And putative African-American crusader Spike Lee? Let's just say his marginalism as an American filmmaker was preceded by his vivisection by Mushnick.

But perhaps Mushnick's greatest endorsement is his consistent position ahead of trends. He was bemoaning parental misbehavior at children's sporting events years -- dare I say decades -- before the last few years saw the first death at such an event and Roger Clemens' recent ejection from his son's game.

Olympic drug testing lunacy? Mushnick was there years before anyone else. Plausibly live coverage, a/k/a golf telecasts' uncanny ability to show remarkable shots without telling viewers they were taped? Mushnick was there before us. We could go on forever but let us leave you with this: next Sunday or Monday, pick up the New York Post, even if you consider the publication too coarse to line your pet's cage. Read Mushnick. Marvel that there is still a guardian for goodness and right in this world. Repeat.