Sitting Ovation

I have to agree with Miss Manners and her correspondent here:

Dear Miss Manners:

I live in a town that bestows standing ovations as routinely as one draws breath. As a child, I was taught that one gets to one's feet when the performer is at the absolute top of his game and has moved one deeply. Otherwise, one applauds appreciatively, or, in some cases, politely.

Within two weeks, I attended a number of events where standing ovations occurred: choral music at an evening church service, an annual meeting in which certificates of appreciation were handed out, a concert performance by three tenors, a high school performance by students and a bar association luncheon at which 1,000 lawyers leapt to their feet both at the appearance of the speaker (a Supreme Court justice) and at the conclusion.

All events were enjoyable and interesting. None qualified as "top of their game" and/or emotionally moving.

Am I hopelessly out of touch? Just being a curmudgeon at my resistance to peer pressure? I do not wish to be unkind but find all this aggravating.

It is called Ovation Inflation, and serious aesthetes deplore it. It leaves them with no way of expressing real joy.

Performers ought to deplore it as well, because it precludes enjoying a genuine triumph. Instead, many have taken to seeding the reaction by applauding their fellow performers and occasionally, Miss Manners regrets to say, themselves.

Sharing your regrets -- and let's not have any of those "out of touch" insults for proper behavior -- Miss Manners urges you to sit these ovations out with quiet dignity, waiting for those special moments.

On the other hand, I think we all need to take a step back and consider the outstanding contributions in the field of sheer, balls-out hackishness made by one Hugh Hewitt. I often think he cannot outdo himself in this regard, but he comes through time and again.

Unlike the TARP funds, which could conceivably come back to the taxpayer and which went mostly into financial stability efforts, the massive spending splurge unveiled by House Democrats is just a joke, an expression of eight years of pent-up liberal frustrations at fiscal discipline --the teenagers given a fifth and the car keys, out on a destructive joyride.

That's right. He just said we have been experiencing fiscal discipline for the past 8 years, 8 years in which we saw a tidy budget surplus replaced by a deficit you need a whiskey-soaked old prospector guide and a team of mules to make it to the depths of. (I'm standing up right now. Well, OK, I'm lying in bed with the laptop, but I'm only partially clothed, which makes up for a lot). Bra-fucking-vo.

Comments

[Doctor Slack]

The only solution to Ovation Inflation is to go one bigger than the Standing O, like the ancient Athenians who crushed Draco under a pile of hats and cloaks. This ovation should be reserved, moreover, for truly great public intellectuals like Hugh Hewitt.