Rat Pack Revisionism

Scooby-dooby-do. That’s amore. Mister Bojangles. Yeah baby, the Rat Pack is back. We went to the show of that title last evening and it really was good. But it wasn’t exactly “nostalgic”, at least not for me, because I never was into the whole Rat Pack ethos, scene, image, in its heyday, i.e. back in the early 60s. I was one of those “sensitive” types who clung to Renaissance music and the less muscular Baroque music (Vivaldi but not Handel, e.g.), the fading remnants of the Beatnik era, and the early manifestations of the “folk” era (think: Bob Dylan, pre-plugged). These slick, Las Vegas Rat Pack types – you know, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Joey Bishop, all of whom were impersonated in the show, and I suppose Peter Lawford as a sort of peripheral character, although I suspect his main value was that he provided a link to the Kennedys – seemed just too brash, too self-confident, too aggressive… oh hell, I’ll say it – too much like “men”. And yes, that is, IMHO, the basis for much of their nostalgic appeal at this time – they were, arguably, the last unapologetic men in America. Did they subscribe to the “Playboy philosophy”? Hell, they _were_ the Playboy philosophy. Did they eat nothing but thick, juicy, rare steaks, with maybe the occasional lobster? Damn straight. Did they drink? Hey – the only solid food Dean Martin ever consumed was whatever happened to fall into his cocktails. Did they smoke? Like chimneys. Did they exploit women? Hey, women are ornaments, don’t you know? “Women’s rights?” What are you, some kind of homo? Hey, but they were slick – large and in charge – schoolyard bullies in tuxedos. Sinatra, the leader of the pack, was, of course, the dominant male of his generation, compared to whom JFK was a bimbo and Elvis a shitkicker. Are there any Sinatras around today? Fuhgeddaboutit. That’s the kind of thing that can only happen in a society where maleness – for good or ill – is given some sort of respect and deference. What do we have now in popular music? A bunch of whining crybabies. What do we have in film? A bunch of aging boys, with very few exceptions – and even those are expected to defer to the “youth cult”. Look at the male film stars of yesteryear. Guys who were 30 look like guys who are 50 now. That was the era when fathers were not only still in charge in most households, but when this was considered a good and proper thing. It was an era before the courts had declared fathers to be the root of all evil, and fatherhood totally irrelevant.

So yeah, I had an experience of nostalgia at the “Rat Pack” show – not so much musical or cultural, but social. The notion that there was a time when some men – call them playboys, degenerates, heels, what have you – were allowed to run amok calls to mind the fact that, among normal people, masculinity was still a valued and cherished commodity. Now that society has morphed into an amalgamation of women who worship Hillary Clinton, and men who offer their testicles up to the gods of political correctness, it kind of makes me long for that previous era, for all its faults and offenses. If the price we have to pay for male normalcy is a few rogue males, I say it’s worth it. What we have now is a tribe of eunuchs and, on the other hand, a handful of double-Y-chromosome sociopaths, with no one in between to provide an anchor and a respectable image for maleness. I see this as not only a loss for society, but a precursor to the loss _of_ society.