The Strangest Icon—Liberace
I reckon Liberace means little to the younger generation. Perhaps they know nothing bout him.His fan club was mostly middle-aged and older females. Strangeness is not something which is easy for human nature to accept. We prefer likeness to ourselves, not strangeness. The closer to home the strangeness, the less likely we will appreciate it. It seems celebrities often get a pass. They can be strange because their own life is not directly in our face. We don’t feel threatened.
Liberace was raised in a middle class mid-western environment. For a start he talked funny, like the queerist of the queers. He was the epitome of non masculinity. He just oozed with pretentious sincerity about everything—or was it pretentious? Hard to say. He was artsy is some sort of overdramatic way. He played the piano and pianistic melodies became his public essence. He was flamboyant, especially about material things and wealth in general. To my knowledge none of his wealth was ill-gotten because he attracted huge crowds to hear him play the piano and act out his strangeness in front of audiences.
Both Liberace and Trump had a lot of wealth. Liberace gained his wealth by providing strange entertainment for a lot of middle aged and older women. Trump gained his wealth through inheritance and swindling everyone with whom he came in contact, having his lawyers master the taxes codes so he didn’t have to pay taxes on his wealth. Both Trump and Liberace flaunted their wealth endlessly.
It would be hard to list any admirable characteristics of Trump which are not self serving to his own goal of amassing an endless amount of wealth. Trump tens to generate resentment and disrespect from most anyone who ends up dealing with him in person. Liberace may generate considerable sarcasm for his strangeness, but few seem to resent his addiction to wealth. Liberace was about as gay as the most flaming gay caricature of this times. Yet, he never admitted being gay for most of his life and his fans went along with his denial. His shows were tacky flamboyancy, his piano playing was talented but related more to popular songs by their nature.
It just seems that strangeness is often more tolerated if it is excessive in a harmless way. Tiny Tim comes to mind. Rodney Dangerfield might fit in here, Don Rickles, Jerry Lewis, Ghandi, and so on. In fact, my own favorite persons of all time—Lincoln, Obama, and Victoria Woodhull, were all ‘strange’ in their own way but seemed a special kind of strangeness that preyed on ethical responsibilities. It seems wealth acquired in pursuit of a better society for the maximum number of citizens is admired. Andrew Carnegie was generally despised for his ruthless rise to wealth until he decided all the rich should return their wealth back into the society from which it came. He did that while still living and strangely was never a contented man until he did this. He died contented with his life.
I guess most of us rub anything special about ourselves into the faces of at least some friends or acquaintances. When young it might be a report card, an athletic skill, a musical skill, or even so simple as when I would buy a meal and repeat “yum, yum, yum this is the best ever” when eating something in front of a friend.
So I guess in reality Liberace was given widespread permission by the public to be so in love with expensive items of all sorts because he was over the top in harmless strangeness. It seems a lot of things which we usually condemn are overlooked in particular cases—like Jack Kennedy and his endless sexual conquests, the useless lives of many clergy persons, the insults of a Don Rickles, the sexual depravity of some rap artists, the eccentricity of people like “Prince’, the awful musical talent of Tiny Tim, and so on.
On the other hand, sometimes we just can’t seem to overlook race, certain inherited religions, certain cultures, physical imperfections, certain harmless personalities, people in ghettos, certain sexual preferences, people who march in the streets, people who root for the wrong sports team or like a particular sport figure, and the list goes on and on. Whatever correct feelings should be toward diverse others, it often gets lost in a maze of emotionality via learned dislike. It the end, the question of “Can’t we all just get along?” just doesn’t fit in with the emotional nature of human essence. This may be the Achilles Heel of human nature.
To be fair, considering the short period of evolutionary time humans have been on this planet, humans have come a long way toward civilized behavior. What holds us back is our inability to practice responsible reproduction, our failure to adopt the Golden Rule as the basis for ethics, and an inability to know when enough is enough for our addictions and compulsive behaviors.
Below is a video of Liberace’s last visit to the Oprah Show. He seems thin, a bit emaciated and am guessing he was already in early stage AIDS. If you recall he was one of the first celebrities to die from AIDS before anyone had any idea what was causing these deaths. If you skip to the last part of the video there is a video trip through one of his homes. When you click on this URL it seems to come up at varied pts in the video—you may have to push it back to the beginning.
