By Catherine Getches
Turns out that "Sesame Street" has something to teach F. Scott Fitzgerald. The man who famously scribbled "there are no second acts in American lives" in the notes for his last novel never heard Elmo croon "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again." I wonder what the novelist would say now if he could see all of the third, fourth and fifth acts that some Americans are enjoying. These days, a career blunder can boost your status, a disgraceful gaffe can be a gateway to greatness, a prison term can be a springboard to stardom. Losers don't just have it made; failure has become the new success, and being phenomenally bad is proving to be pretty lucrative.
It's not just Martha (convict turned TV reality host) or the Donald (bankrupt developer turned TV reality host) or Paris (leaked sex-tape celebrity turned TV reality show celebrity) or all those other preternaturally gifted self-promoters who have cleverly parlayed infamy into fame. No, it's become part of the culture now, not just acceptable, but even appealing. When Whoopi Goldberg said "I'm a big loser, you can be, too" -- the tag line that SlimFast's advertising copywriters gave her when she was hawking their weight loss products last year -- no one even winced at the wordplay. Madison Avenue knows that losers are winners.
This turnabout has my head spinning. When I was growing up, way back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, people tried to tell me that being a loser was okay. But as a teenager wise to the double-speak of the adult world, I knew that all that mollycoddling and boosterism really meant winning is everything. Sure, my dad recited the "Sesame Street" mantras and my mom assured me that the turbo-nerds, not the jocks, would wind up most successful in life. But my tough-love soccer coach had a harder time joining in the no-born-losers revelry. After I scored my second goal in one game, a header no less, he patted me on the back and muttered in his English accent, "Guess there's truth in that saying that every dog does have 'er day."
Now, it seems we love the dogs as much as the underdogs. How else to explain the skyrocketing success of the fundamentally untalented? Fifteen years ago, a lip-syncing scandal ruined Milli Vanilli. But after Ashlee Simpson was exposed for lip-syncing on "Saturday Night Live" in 2004, her reward was her own MTV reality show and a headliner invite to sing at half-time during the biggest college football game of the year.
Fifteen years ago, a public company's inclination was to distance itself from a convicted chief executive. But that's so last decade at Steve Madden's namesake shoe company. The former CEO, who's serving time in a Florida prison for stock fraud and money laundering, is scheduled for release soon. The company's cheeky ad team saw opportunity rather than shame in his misfortune, creating an ad campaign around slogans such as this one: "A new meaning for the word spring time. Steve returns. Spring 2005."
Humor, of course, is the intent. But I still found it telling that various ad execs waxed so enthusiastic about it in interviews with a New York Times reporter. "It's in now to be out -- out of prison, that is," said Paul Cappelli, chief executive at the Ad Store in New York.
It almost makes a law-abiding girl long for an orange jumpsuit.
But if losing is the new black, it's not that easy for everyone to pull it off. I'm thinking about myself, of course. I'm not leak-a-sex-tape desperate (yet), nor do I have a Hilton hotel heiress lineage to bolster my behavior. Apparently, I had it all wrong a few years ago when I interviewed for a job as a co-host on ABC's "The View." I was a long-shot candidate, but I thought the best way to impress the show's producers was to project a strong, successful image. Instead, I should have tried losing in a big way -- like "Survivor" reject Elisabeth Hasselbeck. After getting kicked off the island, she's the one who landed the seat alongside Barbara Walters. (Is that why job interviewers these days always ask you to describe your biggest failure?)
America has always been the land of second chances; many of the original colonists were outcasts looking for a new start. Failure is central to the American paradigm of success. So is the idea that adversity makes us stronger and better.
But now it's as if "The Producers" mentality has taken over. We flock to theaters to laugh at the story of theatrical impresario Max Bialystock and accountant Leo Bloom, who attempt to fleece their investors by putting on a surefire flop that they can close after one night. They seek out the worst play in existence ("Springtime for Hitler"), hire the worst director, find the worst actors (one is named LSD) -- and, in a triumph for irony, create a hit when the public misconstrues the play as a comedy. So it should come as no surprise that a real-life actress, Kirstie Alley, can beef up her fading career by turning her new girth into a new gig as the star of a new show, "Fat Actress," on Showtime.
Likewise, Fox's "American Idol," the most popular show on TV, relies in part on our affection for the losers as well as the winner. The only episodes I watch are the first elimination ones. I must not be alone; why else would the producers spend so much of the first few weeks highlighting the dismally bad or produce a show focusing on the "Best of the Worst?"
But no one expected that the "Worst Idol Ever," Berkeley engineering student William Hung, would give hope to the tone deaf everywhere by converting his humiliating performance into a successful career. His "Inspiration" CD debuted at No. 34 on the charts -- and now he "sings" at half-time shows, gets wedding proposals and does ads for the online site Ask Jeeves.
Everyone seems to have a riff on the "Try, Try Again" tune. A Will Young song titled (no fooling) "Try Again" put it this way: "Now if you find your bat at zero/ And the legends you are not/ You can still wind up a hero/ If you give it one more shot." Rap artist 50 Cent actually took nine shots -- bullets, that is -- during his former drug-dealing days, including one in the face. He has the scars to prove it. Afterward he came to rule the Top 40 charts and is now showing other toiling artists, in his words, "How We Do" in the music industry.
Then there's the Lizzie Grubman route: Back over a person or 16 with your Mercedes SUV outside a swanky Southampton night spot, spend 37 days in jail and end up with your own MTV reality show, "Power Girls." She may need the income, though -- she's settled 15 lawsuits for millions of dollars.
I like to tell myself that, even as a kid, I knew that losing was the way to go. I think that's why, instead of celebrating my team's victory, I got choked up watching the defeated team walk off the court. I'd wonder: What's wrong with a tie? Was overtime all that necessary? So many things about today's la la loser land make sense to me -- maybe that basket I accidentally scored for the other team in a high school playoff game wasn't an accident, after all.
Self-help books aren't my style (the whole talking to the mirror thing), but their authors have long been fascinated with how to serve up recipes for success. Stephen Pollan's "Second Acts: Creating the Life You Really Want, Building the Career You Truly Desire" advises readers to make your life a "custom job" and says that somebody out of work or in financial trouble is the best candidate for a "second act."
I'm not sure where a sputtering freelance writer fits among those categories, but I'm certainly not averse to making a job out of custom losing, if only I could figure out how to fail with enough distinction to clinch real success.
So I'm evaluating my options. Being realistic: Gunplay and vehicular violence aren't part of my skill set -- I'd probably shoot myself (and my plans) in the foot, and my Dad would have my neck if he saw me behind the wheel of a gas-guzzling SUV. Lip-syncing won't be scandalous again for another 10 years, so that's out. I could try bankruptcy, like Trump did to comb over his financial woes, but Congress is about to pass new legislation that will make that tougher.
That leaves weight gain and loss, but while there may be second acts for Kirstie and Whoopi, neither one needs an understudy. So I'm still looking for my inner loser. Maybe I should tickle Elmo to death and make a name for myself as the Muppet Murderer.
There must be a reality show in there somewhere for a loser like that.
Author's e-mail: getchesc@yahoo.com
Catherine Getches is a freelance writer in Northern California, where she sometimes finds that she can't win for losing.
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