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SATAN’S LITTLE HELPERS

Now, lets face it, we all have a dark side. Of course, some people are more inherently evil than others. For lack of a better word, let’s just call them… Germans. But deep down we know that every one of us is capable of going ballistic given the right set of emotional launch codes.

Man is at constant odds with his demons, but you can’t beat a demon, because demons don’t fight fair. The only way to keep a demon at bay is to love your demon. Take your demon out to lunch, get your demon a little tipsy, cop a feel off your demon, and then go back to the office and tell all the other demons around that the demon cooler that your demon puts out like a demon.

The news broadcasts tales from the dark side every night in living color. How can we allow ourselves to derive morbid pleasure from watching NATO air strikes, with the Dow Jones industrial average scrolling across the bottom of the screen, no less? It must be the same switch in our brain that we turn off when we boil a lobster or, worse yet, tell a lobster that the yellow twist-ties on his claws mean that it's Mardi Gras. Unfortunately, evil is perversely compelling. It always has been. Let's face it, the Bible is duller than operating instructions for a hinge-until the snake shows up.

We are all embroiled in a daily struggle against the darker forces in our lives, like greed, selfishness, and dishonesty. I'm no exception. I'm a slave to my own interests. The other day I'm downtown, washing the feet of homeless like I do every Wednesday, and suddenly I remember that its my turn to bake cookies for the guys over at the firehouse but I also promised the school-bus driver, Maddie, that I'd fill in for her so that she can take her kid to the doctor. So, double quick I rinse off Big Rudy, check his bunion, and hurry home. But there's a squirrel in the driveway, and he's unconscious and his leg's broken, so I have to give him mouth-to-mouth and make him a splint, and then there's no time to bake my famous truffled chocolate-macadamia bars from scratch, so I cut corners and I use a mix and, to make matters even worse, I lie and tell the firemen that I did make them from scratch. See? I'm a bad, bad man.

I'm not saying that we should all strip naked and smear ourselves with goat's blood while running form the presidency on the Reform Party ticket, but it is liberating, indeed, even therapeutic, to occasionally dip your little toe into the bracing waters of the verboten. The purveyors of mass culture understand this and provide us with a never-ending stream of reasonably safe thrills to giver our sometimes humdrum lives a sanitary, socially acceptable jolt. Slasher movies, Clive Barker novels, a backstage camera at the VH1 "Divas Live" concert, all are the mental equivalent of a temporary "Hell"s Angels" tattoo a round-trip ticket allowing us a noncommittal sortie into the realm of the aberrant.


The truth nobody wants to admit is that we need the concept of evil because it makes good look so much more attractive by contrast. It' the same reason jewelers always show diamonds against black velvet. You can' have heroes if you don' have villains. Without Hitler, there is no Churchill. Without Saddam Hussein, there is no Colin Powell. Without Darth Vader, well, Luke Skywalker's just another hotshot rocketsled jocky in white jammies hittin' on his sister.

Of course, that' my opinion. I could be wrong.