Valley of the Dolls

Growing up as a kid of the '60s & '70s, I recall hearing much ado about the book and film from 1966/1967, never really grasping what all the fuss was about. I remember hearing bits and pieces about "drugs" and starlets and whatnot, and lots of the fuss swirled around Jacqueline Susann and the persona that had built up around her.

So this past Christmas, one of the cable stations aired the film on-demand and I actually sat down and watched it. A bit dated in terms of the production styles, I watched a remarkable performance by Patty Duke (who I was a fan of from the Patty Duke Show & Miracle Worker, etc), about a group of women who in their quest for success, stardom, and money, eventually threw caution to the wind - and on the way, suffered the consequences due to the stress of their journey. Those who made it, became what we now term "the 1%", yet their road there was perilous.

In a way, these individuals have become the glamorous "face" of the wealthy and take the abuse of that image - drawing our ire and feeding the torment that plagues so many of them. Patty's character of "Neely" somewhat (but not exactly) parallels that of Whitney Houston, with the drive for perfection but with a cost.

Yet you have even wealthier 1%ers - the vulture capitalists like Romney, who tend to get a pass from the public despite the fact that what they do often impacts so many via corporate raiding, sucking companies dry, leaving the flailing corpse behind, and then going to the next unlucky company. They sit on over $3 trillion orf capital and speculate with it - moving it from the stock market to the oil futures, then to the gold futures, then back to oil futures, then to pork bellies, CDOs (or whatever is left of those), and on and on... They contribute nothing to the society as a whole in terms of investment in actually making a product or providing a service. These people are hidden from our psyche and often from our (and more so, the media's) constant critique and wrath (obviously not on DU however).

So as we come to say goodbye to Whitney, we perhaps should consider that yes, those like her "made their own beds", yet they at least provided us heart- and soul-filling entertainment for their efforts, sadly too often at the cost of their own lives... unlike many others in those certain "hidden" sectors who are truly for "self", reaping the benefits of their practices, and plotting the next big deal in those "quiet rooms".