And tell to me of Zoo of Lander Two.
A richer tapestry of nonsense you
will never ever know oh youth ah bold!
full images concepts pop stars enfold
ing us we viewers, partakers who laugh.

I laughed so merry, felt just almost sure
that we’ll attain the best for all through fun.

Remember the thesis in “Cabaret”: that the Nazis took over because people were too busy with parties and general flippant living to pay attention to the looming disaster? But this silliness of Zoolander; it seemed serious. And it contemplated a lot of ideas–all with a kindness, a light touch, a generous and gentle hand. I liked it. A creative explosion of jokes, images, and references; likable characters; a frolicking deconstruction of pop culture from the worship of beauty to the glorification of sex to the dueling bumpersticker-logics to the obsession with political correctness, to celebrity worship. But most of all the fun! They were having fun goofing exploring in ideas, images, characters, worlds. It was fun without being mean; life can be fun without being terrible and that is wonderful–that is the antidote to the violent certainties that wall people and peoples off from one another. Let’s have fun, be open-minded, and work on the nuts and bolts of policy together–what if it were fun to think not about how X must be terrible because the evil party thought of it and Y must be great because the good party thought of it, but to think about policies together, about the details of how we can move real situations in better direction. What if experimenting in cautiously growing a better and better government was part of the fun of life? What if politics was a nice, fun project where we all work together to help us all win?

AMW/BW