PAPER MAN I

Some people think TV is out to get the church. I don't think so. At least it isn't out to get you any more than cotton candy is out to get you. If all you eat is cotton candy, well, to some extent, it's your own stupid fault.

I don't think TV is out to get the church, I think it's out to get everybody, so the church shouldn't feel special in getting got. TV can't live and move and breathe in specifics. TV is only good at making Paper Man. TV isn't the only thing that makes Paper Man, but Paper Man is the only thing TV can make.

Let me explain. Imagine a room. In the room there is a man who is 5 feet tall. There is a second man in the room, he is 7 feet tall. Someone, let's call him Buyer Man, wants to buy, say, a sports jacket for both men in the room, but Buyer Man doesn't know the men in the room. Buyer Man asks another man, lets call him Numbers Man, what size jackets should I buy? Numbers Man says, "The average hight of the men in the room is 6 feet." So Buyer Man buys two jackets, each jacket suitable for a 6 foot man. Obviously, niether of the men, the 5 foot man nor the 7 foot man, will have a jacket that fits. But I don't want to talk about the 5 foot man or the 7 foot man. I want to talk about the 6 foot man who doesn't exist. The 6 foot man is a generalized man. He is a statistical man. But the 5 foot man and the 7 foot man don't live and move and breathe in generalizations and statistics. They live and move and breathe in specifics.

It's obvious to us that the 6 foot man doesn't exist. But since two jackets were made for a 6 foot man, the 5 foot man and the 7 foot man might be tempted to think there is a 6 foot man. Neither of them sees a 6 foot man with them in the room, but still they might think there is a 6 foot man. Even worse, they might think they are suppose to be 6 foot men. They might actually think they are, in some way, inadequate; rather than thinking the made up statistical man is inadequate, too general, not particular enough. The 5 foot man might think of himself as too short, and the 7 foot man might think of himself as too tall. That would be very dangerous, and very sad. The 6 foot man can be a very dangerous man, even though he does not exist.

I was wondering what to call the 6 foot man. The dangerous man that does not exist. I thought maybe Phantom Man, which is good because he isnt' really there, but it sounds too much like a comic book character, so that isn't quite right. Then I thought Invisible Man, more like he's there, but you can't see him, which isn't the right idea, plus, there is a comic book charater called invisible man, so that doesn't work. Then I thought of Everyman, which I think some philosopher used once to describe the same thing I'm talking about, but I didn't want to copy. Then I thought of Paper Man. And I liked that. It makes me think of people getting it right "on paper" but getting it wrong in the real world; and it made me think of papier-mache, like a quote in Heart of Darkness. "I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my fore-finger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe." But mostly Paper Man made me think of a thin, flimsy, barely there, not-quite-man, man.