Legal Commentary

As some experts have noted, "[i]n the courts of England, a fool was a comic figure with a quick tongue who entertained the king, the queen, and their guests. He was allowed to?and even expected to?criticize anyone at court."

Dennis Miller is a witty fool, a clown prince of modern America. His often obscure references to popular culture, religion, political figures, philosophical concepts, literature, scientific theories, and a myriad of other themes, both high and low, often delivered in an almost stream of consciousness rant, mark him as one of my favorite critics of our age. Like the court jester or fool of Medieval Europe, he can tell the Emperor that he has no clothes, as long as the Emperor laughs.

A recent story in the Dallas Morning News  that featured Miller brought this home to me in an especially Texas fashion.

Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens turned 80 on Tuesday, and his wife, Madeleine, wanted to throw him a extra-special birthday bash.

This year, Boone knew she was planning his party, but that was all. So when he walked into the Dallas Country Club on Tuesday evening, he was as surprised as everyone else.

The first clue that something big was cooking came on Monday when sentries secured all entries to the club's ballroom and limousines began delivering the stars for a closed-door rehearsal.      

If Monday afternoon shoppers at Highland Park Village cocked an ear to the wind and heard superstar Andrea Bocelli harmonizing with British soprano Sarah Brightman, that wasn't Memorex.   

Madeleine dispatched a Gulfstream to Italy to fetch Mr. Bocelli and his fiancee, Veronica Berti, and bring them to Dallas for Monday's rehearsal and Tuesday's party. Another plane went for Miss Brightman, the former wife of Andrew Lloyd Webber who originated some of his most famous roles, including Christine Daae in The Phantom of the Opera .    

American Idol fave Katharine McPhee, who stirred up McPheever among her Idol fans, has toured and recorded with Mr. Bocelli. She opened the evening along with Belgian chanteuse Lara Fabian.

Miller led off the festivities with observations that made the guests laugh, yet, to me, were piercing.

Opening the evening, comedian Dennis Miller looked out over the gold-rimmed crystal and the sea of flowers and noted: "Boone is one of the few people who can watch Giant and think it's a home movie. This place makes Caligula look like a minimalist."

The average American middle class citizen lives with luxuries that Caligula could not have imagined. T. Boone Pickens spends hundreds of thousands, perhaps more, on a birthday party.

I love Bocelli's talent, as well as Fabian's, and appreciate Brightman's (although I find her a bit "over emotive"). McPhee, not so much, but I recognize that she's popular and has talent. I don't begrudge the performers for taking the dollars offered them to perform for Pickens. That's how they honestly earn their keep. Yet, there's something extremely decadent about the fact that Madeleine Pickens spends all that money on entertainment for her husband's birthday. There's something so over-the-top about flying private jets to to Europe to transport singers that I can't help but wonder whether Miller's allusion to Caligula isn't apt.

I realize that many people may disagree with me, but I think that this sort of extravagance speaks poorly not only of Pickens, but of our popular culture. This was a feature column in the entertainment section of the Dallas newspaper, an event that the editors of the newspaper thought was worthy of being reported. What does it say about us as a society? Was Miller closer to the mark than the people laughing may have comprehended?