Golden Boys, Sex and Power – by Mark H. Rich

Following Cynthia’s essay, I have to start by saying, Amen! And here are my own verses to her chorus. As a true Jesus freak, my verses are Christ-centered.

Christ shows the world the counter-model of human relations. Both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn are examples of an all-too-well-known type: the Golden Boy. This is the man to whom everything and everyone belongs by right (including our adulation) and who is therefore exempt from the usual rules of adult behavior that the rest of us mortals are stuck with having to follow. These are the kings, presidents, prime ministers, billionaire financiers, CEOs, millionaire athletes or actors, etc. You know this type in your bones. You learned it in grade school, and it is relentlessly reinforced by the world.

One of Schwarzenegger’s paramours confessed of her initial encounter with him (he aged 27 at the time; she 16) that he had “this overpowering way with women that you get weak.” Isn’t that just exactly the truth of the Golden Boy?

Consider now Jesus Christ, who more than anyone ever before or since really had the right to be the Golden Boy – he “was in the form of God” (Phil 2:6) – but refused to profit personally in any way from that status and “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” In this way he exposes all these other Golden Boys as mere idols, created out of our craven human love for fakes over truth, for their dominative power that makes everyone else weak. Yet the power of the truth will not be denied. By the end (see 1 Cor. 15:24-28) God will be all in all, and there will be no more room for any of the fakes. And we who follow the real thing – Christ the Son of God, not Conan the Barbarian – already know the true one.

Part of the good news now, ahead of the eschaton, is that at least these two Golden Boys are not merely getting away with it. DSK is headed for a New York trial while the French fret and fume. It took far too long and he got away with far too much, but at last he will get a little of his due. As of this week there is no hint of legal action against Schwarzenegger, but he now has to face the court of public opinion and censure, with his clearly victimized wife and legitimate children in full public view (not to mention his mistress and his “other” son, who are victims as well).

But we too have much to learn. Jesus really means it when he says “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” God’s own leader shows us real leadership and therefore teaches us what we should expect from our own leaders. Our cultural expectations must be shaped and empowered by the Son of Man. All our laws, policies, and programs avail us nothing when we ourselves do not have the expectation, the demand, that our rulers must actually serve us and build us up, rather than this overpowering way with us that we get weak.

A particularly nauseating example of this over-power that creates weakness occurred recently in Washington DC when the Senate tried to call out oil company CEOs on their need for tax breaks when they are currently making record profits.  The Democratic senators thought they would be able to cow the CEOs, but the latter had absolutely none of it. They made it clear that if the tax breaks didn’t continue, they would cut their oil production in the US. They sang well the song that now resonates across the country: we won’t do business here unless you pay us.

And we take it, again and again and again. Protect Wall Street robber-investor barons who engineered the worst economic catastrophe since the Depression? Yes. Promise to support American families falling into bankruptcy due to said catastrophe, and then weasel out on that promise? Yes. When will we realize that we are begging for our own punishment, for our overlords to screw us and rape us over and over and over? Strauss-Kahn and Schwarzenegger are metaphors, signs of our stupid times. What they do to women is what the political-business-cultural elite do to the rest of us.

Oui mes amis, plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose. But that’s actually good news for us. The things that our Golden Boys are doing to us now are the same things that they were doing 2000 years ago. And the real thing, Jesus, can again lead us in the real change we need against them.

Servant leadership is the only real leadership. Take it from Jesus.