Ex-Guise and Videotape

Remember those Christmas Eves spent in the monochrome glow of ABC’s airing of the Capra classic “It’s A Wonderful Life,” with all the rapt huddling, the luminescent self-forgetting that entailed? Or, for the sake of universality, “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve”? I don’t, really—usually someone fell asleep midway through, or a fight broke out—but I’ve found a commendable cognate in YouTube, and one that caters happily to my bombed-out, Internet-generation attention span.

Normally, my roommates, friends, and I turn to the tiny silver screen to while away the time; there isn’t much intellectual investment in sports bloopers, say, or Mike Huckabee’s latest ‘is he joking?’ moment. Of late, however, two videos in particular have me wondering whether this online equivalent of kick-the-can might actually have some cataclysmic import on how we conceive of our idols: in this case, the charming, all-American pair of Tom Cruise and William F. Buckley, Jr.

Revealed to the world last month by the popular blog Gawker, the latest in a series of Mr. Cruise’s on-camera antics was made for a ceremony at which the actor received his Church of Scientology’s “Freedom Medal of Valor” (coming soon to militaries near you). In it, the star of “Cocktail” and “Losin’ It” lauds his church’s ability to ‘improve conditions,’ makes use of a dizzying array of cryptic acronyms, sound effects and apparent neologisms, and laughs maniacally for nearly a minute altogether.

I certainly don’t mean to impugn Scientology at large, but over the course of this nine-minute video its most high-profile adherent behaves in a way that, never having met one, I imagine a lunatic might behave. The “Unabomber Manifesto” of Ted Kaczynski ‘62 sounds measured and logical compared to some of the things that Maverick is saying: for example, “it’s not how to run from an S.P. [suppressed person, or non-Scientologist]; it’s P.T.S.S.P., how to shatter suppression…You apply it; it’s like boom.”

Of course, the reason many of you have already seen this video is precisely because it’s Maverick saying all these things; the boy wonder from a bygone era of mixed feelings has gone off the deep end—not in back rooms and rehabilitation centers but a click away, in front of a jeering crowd of bloggers and blog-readers (formerly, “the unemployed”). This lack of privacy might be tragic if this man weren’t paid $67 million a year; maybe it still is.

But Mr. Cruise is hardly the best example of a man undermined by the hyper-public exposure of his private ‘eccentricities’; after all, he has had no qualms broadcasting his peculiar views on national television.

We turn instead to another video victim, the archconservative capo di tutti capi at the National Review. A polyglot, intellectual and harpsichordist, Mr. Buckley has never been the media’s darling, or their plaything; indeed, he has become late in life the Jeremiah of authentic American conservatism.

This estimable position, apparently, doesn’t secure one against the relentless trawler called YouTube: those easy, embarrassing mistakes—calling someone a ‘major league asshole’ under your breath, getting drunk at a wedding, flipping off a camera—can and will be dredged up for mass consumption (in these three cases, just because you’re the 43rd President of the United States).

In Buckley’s case, the dirt comes in the form of a 1968 debate with homosexual essayist Gore Vidal (this was back when people other than Chris Matthews were permitted to speak on American television). Told to ‘shut up” and otherwise antagonized, Mr. Buckley lashes out: “Listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the god-damn face, and you will stay plastered.” Quaint postwar vernacular aside, the moment, somehow benign on the page, seems pretty ugly on video, in the light of day. From understandable rancor and an articulate tongue springs this petulant slur; Buckley seems at once less like a cultured commentator, and more like a prep-school prat, bullying his way to the top.

All this just goes to show that thirty indelible seconds of video can cast surprisingly sprawling aspersions on even the most monolithic resume, the most hallowed bibliography. Therein lies YouTube’s appeal: seeing is believing, and even the unlucky lapse stays with its viewer longer than a glowing profile in Parade magazine. Harvard’s aspirants, be forewarned: make sure those cameras are off.



James M. Larkin ’10, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Quincy House.