Did anybody catch the new unemployment numbers? A point two percent decrease but that’s only because of seasonal employment.
*crickets*
Okay, how about Obama meeting with the AFL-CIO and the Black Caucus about job creation? Hmm, one’s a union and the other is just a political group made up of millionaires. They’re not really separate entities that are in the business of creating viable employment now, are they?
*tumbleweed rolling*
Do you know why a lot of people missed it? Because they were still feeding at the trough that is the Tiger Woods story, guzzling the slop along with a garnish of the White House crashers, Michaele and Tareq Salahi. Who, by the way, gleefully posted on Facebook, “Honored to be at the White House for the state dinner in honor of India with President Obama and our First Lady!” which is really just the same as oinking that “I was peed on by Brandy’s brother.”
We all remember Andy Warhol prognosticating that ‘everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.’ However, we, as a nation, have become so addicted to mediocrity that nowadays five minutes will be sufficient. We’ve allowed the TV camera to become as seductive as the Sirens encountered by Ulysses. No, scratch that. More like Circe, who turned people into swine. Like heroin, television is the shot of momentary escapism for those living the emptiest of lives.
Goddamn, where did we go off the rails? Was it Cops or The Real World? What does this say about us as humans? I mean, the desire for notoriety and/or distinction is as old as time as is the desire for schadenfreude. The only change is the accessibility of it all. Too many channels that need/want to be filled, cheaply. Too many channels so there isn’t any sort of priority (or notion) of quality, thus making it ridiculously easy for anyone to be on television. Too many channels that masquerade as ‘reality’ but present nothing more than poorly-acted, scripted windows into the souls of characters who are unqualified to even have an opinion. All these programs and we humiliate ourselves on each one of them. It may not be a good analogy, but there were only 12 people around at the Last Supper, maybe a handful at the assassination of Julius Caesar, and only 2 men on the moon in 1969. History has shown that there doesn’t have to be everyone and his entourage involved in something of significance. Yet, if you check out satellite programming, you’ll find a seemingly endless supply of television channels (enablers) claiming to offer something of significance, but they camouflage it under terms such as ‘special’ or ‘once in a lifetime’ or ‘truly unique.’ It’s because the people involved – from Jonathan Antin to Khloe Kardashian to Puck to Kendra Wilkinson – genuinely believe their own self-importance, and since they happened to be on television, we’ve allowed ourselves to believe it also.
In societies that are on a downward spiral, life and politics (not just in Washington, but in the television network boardroom) become the arenas where the political and media elite – both of whom have long since sold out in order to serve their corporate handlers – rule through image and presentation. Bread and circuses, smoke and mirrors, sand and fog. It’s in this arena where the mediocre are brainwashed and elevated to the superhuman, and we nod like amiable dunces and ask for more Kool-Aid. Did you know that TLC once stood for The Learning Channel? You wouldn’t know that by how they pimped out the Gosselins (who are both probably mega-pissed that they no longer occupy the cover of the tabloids) and their 8 future social liabilities. One could catch performing arts on Bravo, but since NBC bought it, the programming pretty much caters to the Real Housetrash of Orange County, of DC, of Atlanta, et al, ad nauseum. A&E originally featured –shock! – arts and entertainment via concerts, stage productions, and informative documentaries, but now panders to the lowest denominator with trash such as Dog the Bounty Hunter and the god-awful Criss Angel Minddouche. I really don’t have to mention MTV, do I? What a commentary yet we continue to allow it our time, thus encouraging the ridiculous preening and sense of self-entitlement filtered through abnormal behavior. I shudder to think that Steve O is probably small potatoes to whatever gonzo reality show that’s set to come down the pike which requires a desperate jackass to pants Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
We precariously teeter on the abyss of moral nihilism; the kind of age that Bones McCoy would lambast when faced with situations that flew in the face of human evolution and intellectual capacity. We have trashed our educational systems, converting them into processing plants that spit out clones and drones taught to not ask questions and to pursue a career as a human directional for the nearest gated community or check cashing outlet. The arts and humanities, which use to be a respected discipline of both logic and compassion which required thinking people to take a step back and examine ourselves with big questions about the meaning of life and of life with a purpose has taken a backseat to our interest if a syphilitic gnome can find love with tattooed ass hats found slithering on Sunset Boulevard. Literature, long maligned by rote, manufactured opinion, low standards, and an increasingly illiterate public, continues to celebrate the bland while truly original artists get threatened with something far worse than violence or censorship – apathy (unless you’re Stephanie Meyer). Our news media, which should be pursuing answers to questions, has hopelessly confused PR spin and intellectual fluff with actual news, thus refusing to keep the public in the know or give a voice to critics as to the state of the nation or the corporate machinations behind it. (It’s very interesting to note how the government considers corporate-owned media as being ‘free press’ while blogs and alternate news sources get labeled as ‘mere opinion.’) And since we, the soma’d multitudes, can’t be bothered to question ourselves (probably because we don’t know how or due to our fear of knowing the answers), or question what we pay exorbitant amounts of attention to, or question the ramifications of our (in)actions, it’s all the more easier to gloat about Tiger Wood’s marital problems or ruminate on Jessica Simpson’s empty uterus. We figure, ‘as long as it’s them and not us.’
The mania over this kind of useless entertainment, this useless knowledge of a scripted, manufactured lifestyle that will never be in the ‘reality’ of most people, was designed by our consumer society. Why do you think television is referred to as programming? We’re the ones who baked the bricks and laid the cornerstone for this huge pyramid to honor the cult of the self. And we still do. Every time we click on E! or ET or whatever shiteous ‘reality’ show that poses as news or an insight into the human condition, we somehow manage to dismiss a little more compassion, a little more honesty. The cult of self-entitlement and self-importance that permeates these shows merely underscores that ethics and fairness and good ol’ fashioned minding-your-own-fucking-business are now largely irrelevant. Success is solely defined in terms of money and a decent Q factor; there is no bad publicity, only a bad publicist. Manipulation in any form is an asset. And our moral collapse(s), be it temporary or long-term, depends on our ability or inability to disengage ourselves from it.




Promised as a job saver – albeit temporary (but they don’t tell you that) – and an economy booster, here is where some of the money went.


She studied classical and flamenco guitar under the tutelage of Andres Segovia, and was twice named Best Flamenco Guitarist by Guitar Player Magazine. Married at a young age (which she claims was merely a business contract) to bandleader Xavier Cugat, she moved to New York City where she performed with Cugat’s orchestra in New York and Las Vegas. She appeared on Laugh-In in the late 1960’s where her utter lack of fluency was played as a comic focus. By 1971, she was headlining shows in Vegas, reportedly making as much as Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin. Throughout the 1970’s, she appeared on The Love Boat,
Donny & Marie, The Mike Douglas Show (which she guest hosted at least once), and notoriously campy Brady Bunch variety show. However, by the late 1970’s overexposure had damaged her popularity, and she spent much of the 1980’s and 1990’s in Hawaii. Over the last decade, she returned to television with commercials for Sprint and Geico insurance, as well as appearing in VH1’s The Surreal Life. She still puts in appearances in Las Vegas and Branson, Missouri, as well as the annual Jerry Lewis MDA telethon, and was the Celebrity Grand Marshal of the San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade last year. 
Yet at the same time, the school districts and the local governments proudly announce that they’re cutting back the availability of junk food on campus while the big government informs us that we are still grossly overweight, yet they the schools turn around and force the kids to sell – that’s right, you’re learning – cookie dough and pizza mix. By the way, the stuff that these organizations are hawking is ridiculous. A tube of dough that makes up less than two dozen cookies* lists close to $10 and the pizza stuff cooks up the equivalent of a small Tony’s pepperoni that I can find in the freezer at Dillons for less than $2. So all this profiteering goes back to the schools (right?) and yet we have kids who spell ’skills’ with a freaking ‘z’ at the end. Is it just me?

