Miss California Fired?

An internet headline today says that Miss California was fired. Excuse me, isn't that like moving the "Brooklyn" Dodgers to California? The public thinks that a baseball team represents Brooklyn, that the team belongs to the city, that the team is a part of the city ... No, no. The team was a privately owned business. It could do whatever the culture would let it get away with — and apparently that was a great deal: including moving to another continental coast. Now Californians are encouraged to believe that "Miss California" is somehow of and for California. No, her image is owned by a private enterprise: the girl given the title, and the perks that come with it, must conform to what the privately owned business expects: California and its citizens, the world and its citizens be damned.

Once upon a time in the kleptocracy we call "England" the people believed that what they called the Commons was owned in common by all "Englishmen": "men" in that case also meant the women and children "belonging" to the men as well. In other words, if there was a sheep grazing on the Commons, that sheep was common property. Then all at once the "Commons" turned out to belong to this or that friend of the king. Suddenly your ordinary Scotsman discovered that this and that familiar part of Scotland belonged to some Englishman.

Whoever owns the LA Dodgers, or whoever owns Miss California, had better watch out: some kleptocrats may decide she belongs to Ted Turner, or to Bill Gates, or to god-help-us, The Donald.

Once upon a time it was easy: everything belonged to God. Of course the trouble with God was that he belonged to the Jews. No: then he belonged to the Emperor Constantine. No: then he belonged to the Catholic Church. ... Then God belonged to the Puritans. Now God belongs to any fundamentalist who's illiterate enough and loud enough.

I think we're going to find out too late that none of its belongs to any of us. 'Cause we'll all be dead: of terminal hebetude.