Carnett: Modesty seems to be less important in today’s society

Ah, the brain-numbing narcissism.

Have you ever wished to be famous, as in “They love me! They really love me!” famous?

I once did — for about 10 minutes — when I was 18. I was seduced, perhaps, by my close proximity to Hollywood.

German writer Carl Zuckmayer was no Hollywood acolyte. He quipped years ago that Tinseltown is an expensive and drunken “anteroom to hell.” I’m starting to pick up on that one, Mr. Z.

I was a raw college theater student when the allure of bright lights grabbed me. I remember being in a production at Orange Coast College my sophomore year. I played a supportive comedic role. In one scene, my character hid beneath a table covered by a floor-length tablecloth.

The lead character exposed my presence to the audience. She yanked the cloth off the table and, in one fell swoop, I grabbed the cloth, covered myself and collapsed into a quivering heap at center stage. The audience roared.

No one could see me beneath the tablecloth, so I allowed myself a moment to break character and revel in my triumph. I was so self-satisfied. The audience was eating from my hand!

Little did I realize that I’d have to work harder for the next laugh and harder still for the one after that. And, like almost everything else in life, my feeling of exhilaration wouldn’t last.

After trying to hog every last electromagnetic radiation beam floating in the ether above the stages on which I trod, I grew weary of myself.

In a nutshell, I was “over” me. I deduced that if I didn’t want to see much of me on stage, why should anyone else? Carpe tedium.

Remember Lou Gehrig, the indestructible Iron Horse of the New York Yankees from the 1920s and ‘30s? Of Herculean dimensions, Lou was humble, self-effacing and adored by millions. The first book I read cover to cover (several times) was Frank Graham’s biography, “Lou Gehrig: A Quiet Hero,” on loan from the Lindbergh School library. I read it in my fifth-grade classroom, tucked behind my social studies textbook cover.

My friends preferred Gehrig’s bombastic teammate, Babe Ruth. But I was drawn to Gehrig’s modesty and superhuman strength.

By the time I was in the fifth grade in 1954-55, Ruth and Gehrig had long since departed the scene. But my pals and I knew who they were. We idolized them.

Remember that “funster,” Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Union’s humorless foreign minister in the 1950s through the ‘70s? Seemed like he was always in our country negotiating some deal or another. He was the ever-present Soviet scowl on American television.

Gromyko was said to be the most insensate man on the planet. He represented a heartless ideology, yet he did display one redeeming trait: He cared not what others thought of him.

“My personality doesn’t interest me,” he once deadpanned. That point of view flies in the face of today’s cultural salons that trade solely in dash and flash.

Guess which diva recently had a public wardrobe malfunction or undressed for a photo session sure to leave the masses breathless? We all know dozens of names we could plug in.

Does the term “modesty” have meaning any longer? Has public shame exited the building? Where are this generation’s Mother Teresa, Dag Hammarskjöld or Abraham Lincoln?

No, I’m content to live life as an outlier. It’s good to be underexposed. I’m not captive to anyone’s expectations.

Don’t the celebs, whom we’re forced to witness prancing daily before our eyes, grow sick of themselves? Really! I mean, please-oh-please, how many times must I view Marie Osmond bragging about her loss of 50 pounds?

She boasts that her belly is flatter today than when she was in her 20s. I don’t care.

When, by the way, did it become OK to say “belly” in commercials instead of a less coarse tummy reference? I’m guessing we blew past that road marker decades ago.

Our culture seems teetering at the ragged edge.

That happens when all things become “about me.”

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JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.