False Idols
[...]
It’s awards season and if you, like me, are criminally under-recognised in your own era, it can be a somewhat galling time of year.
Here you see a fleet of pampered celebrities trudge onto a stage to regurgitate nauseating speeches about “equality”, “respect” and so-called “basic human dignity” before receiving shiny baubles purely for pretending to be someone else. And yet when I’m caught pretending to be someone else, the courts deem it “impersonating a police officer with intent to deceive and defraud the elderly”.
Nevertheless, it won’t surprise you to hear that I consider myself an optimist. It’s hard not to be when you own a vast and profitable media empire and several of the smaller Canary Islands. So I always try to work on the basis that, at any moment, my unique gifts and achievements will be showered with the praise they so richly deserve.
Such fateful days can emerge from nowhere, like an embolism, and you must be prepared. That is why I always carry around with me a ready-made all-purpose acceptance speech which allows me to appear eloquent and insufferably entitled with the greatest of ease. With a few slight tweaks and tucks it can be made to fit any occasion.
Now, for what I am surely about to receive, I say the following:
[...]
It is with profound and heartfelt contempt that I most humbly accept this [lifetime achievement award/best-in-show rosette/rear-of-the-year prize/court summons – delete as applicable].
On this momentous day, several thoughts occur to me, thoughts such as: it’s about damn time; what took so long?; how did this not occur to you sooner?; etc.
Although, as a shameless egotist, I feed off adulation much as a hummingbird frenziedly gorges itself on nectar to survive, I want to be clear that I hold your esteem in utter disdain. The [academy/general public/grand jury] are philistines and the daily insult of their disregard for my colossal achievements and versatile talents was, in itself, the greatest compliment I could possibly be paid.
One always wants to be revered as a cultural and intellectual titan; it’s just a shame those inevitably doing the revering are themselves so wholly without merit. Perhaps if you buck up your ideas, then I might one day receive your commendation with the humility and grace that you were probably expecting. But it is not this day, you hamwitted proletarian backwash.
I would like to take a moment to acknowledge my parents. This award stands as a shimmering monument to what can be achieved by vigorously spurning their every hope and expectation for you. They wanted me to become a human rights lawyer. Now mine is the name that human rights lawyers whisper, with ashen faces and sorrowful hearts.
Beyond that, I owe them nothing. Not even the polish for their dilapidated, moss-scabbed graves.
I wouldn’t be here today – literally – were it not for the repeated botched assassination attempts commissioned by my loved ones, past and present. Your ineptitude in hiring contract killers has been a source of constant amusement and gratification to me.
Nor would I be here without what others have given me. Often one hears about standing on the shoulders of giants; I stand on the smouldering heap of lives I have ruined. Enemies, colleagues, tax collectors – I stand astride them all like an Olympian and gaze into the red heart of the brave dawn I have fashioned for myself.
But, much as I often insist to the contrary, it is not all about me. I hope to be an aspirational beacon for future generations (though, of course, only those who come after my death – I don’t appreciate direct competition). To the bastard progeny of the future I offer you this advice:
Never let anyone tell you what you can’t do. Not your family, not UN Peacekeepers, not those pen-pushers at the Hague.
Never let anyone tell you something is impossible. Not your family, not NASA, not your own lawyers when you try to plead pre-emptive insanity in your trial for war crimes at the Hague.
Above all, be yourself. Because no one can else can do it for you.
Apart from Joaquin Phoenix.
When Hollywood finally gets over what it has described as its “severe moral reservations” and gets around to producing the biopic of my life*, I have no doubt Phoenix would make a more compelling version of me than even I have. He has the range: the perfect blend of quiet charisma and bonechilling insanity that such a challenging role demands.
And you know what, I hope he wins another Oscar for it.
But until that day, you’ll just have to learn to appreciate the me that you’ve been blighted with.
You don’t deserve me. Now summon my carriage.
[Exeunt]
__________________________
* The script for Maslin: An Empire of Madness is sitting in my drawer, awaiting a producer and director with the right vision and a strong stomach, ready to be born to an unsuspecting world. Take a chance, you cowards!
