Image is everything.
Posted on 11 Dec 2008
I caught a W exit interview on Reuters yesterday. My favorite bit is always when the interviewer prudently asks him to name his failures. So with a hem and haw our lame duck, Commander-in-Halfwit admitted that the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was tragic and sent “the wrong message to the Arab nations.” Ugh. Is that it!? How long is this interview anyway? Never mind that most anyone could draw up a few billion other regretful political escapades from the past eight years, but to name such a deplorable event as simply a “wrong message” turned my stomach. How about the act itself, did that matter? Since when does the message or perception or image trump reality.
This has me wondering if our image management savvy causes more calamity than calm. We have quite the knack for tilting the mirror just right or explaining why things aren’t quite as bad as they seem. I would offer that all of us are tremendous cognitive marketers of image when deep down we despise such effort. Oddly, we suspect that everyone buys our bullshit and yet possess cunning when offered the sheen of others.
While I’m hurling rocks at broadsided targets (W), why don’t I bring our old friend capitalism along. As capitalists, we are not simply rewarded for hard work, but for outdoing our neighbors. Competition amongst products and businesses and co-workers and nations and lovers defines us. The sweetest smelling turd wins. I can’t even watch an interview on The Daily Show without suspecting the integrity and responses of the book-toting author. Everyone is selling something; the wrong expression will cost you zeros on your pay stub. Ask your publicist first.
I am just as guilty as the next. I know how to present my most polished self, or earnestly explain why I misbehaved this one time or was misunderstood. The tragedy is that all these machinations perpetuate the accepted standard for the self. I am tired. The harder I work to present a better-than-true self the more work is required of me later. I think this is why I make such efforts to put myself down. Fearful of attracting others to an ideal me, I posit a minimal, pathetic standard. And while feverishly working on others’ perceptions, I miss the bliss of the moment. I’m too busy piloting around in my head, assessing how much you like me.
Perhaps I will try on some apathy, no that isn’t it; a healthy detachment from credibility, not it either… what if I truly didn’t care what others thought of me, sorta Pol Pot-esque. Hmm… I’m gonna go tell my boss I dropped a work hour blogging about turds. Perfect. There it is.
And I voted for W–both times. God bless ‘im.
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