Thursday, June 9, 2011

You there, you with the stars in your eyes

Checked out the internet today (reluctantly), and because I’m a helluva guy, I felt compelled to keep my multitude of readers up to date with the important issues of the day.
Just doin’ my part, you know?
I’ll give you the headlines, allow them to sink in, and then we can discuss them in depth.
Ready? Here we go:
“Justin Bieber sports earrings”
“Aniston, new beau go public”
“Katie takes Suri for swim”
Now, I’m not a taskmaster. And despite my occasional verbal callousness, if you don’t feel properly informed, or if these subjects are a bit too overwhelming to delve into, politically or otherwise, I’ll gladly back off these hot-button issues.
But as they are the major stories of the day, we really should put the humor on the backburner for a change and deal with the realities of the cold, hard world.
You know, my many readers, as we once again turn to the fingers on one hand to compute the average IQ of the average American citizen, the sad reality we face is that in way too many folks’ ever-shrinking minds, inconsequential drivel like the three very real headlines above really does constitute the vital news of the day.
The world has become so celebrity-driven and so accepting of soft Hollywood gossip as hard news for daily discussion that these stories that affect virtually no one and that no one with an ounce of gray matter rattling around in their noggin should even give a microsecond of a thought to are an integral part of the daily news grind.
I’m old enough to remember a time when a news program actually featured news – who died, what important social service is about to go out on strike, what countries were exchanging gunfire - you know, incidents that actually affected multiple human beings on the planet.
And nowhere, barring the death of a film legend or a movie queue that wound around three city blocks, did anything about movie stars, TV stars, pop stars, reality stars or self-declared stars garner a second of televised time.
These days it’s not unusual to see blatant plugs for upcoming ABC television programs on ABC-affiliated local news programs. It’s also very common to see an entertainment segment dedicated to who’s dating George Clooney, who’s boffing Robert Pattinson and what underfed UNICEF poster child was just welcomed into the Pitt-Jolie clan.
And the all-too-obvious question, kiddies, is, who cares about this crap?
Does it matter to anyone but the subjects of these P.R. wet dreams who they’re dating, impregnating or with whom they’re doing the horizontal mambo? And most importantly, why does it matter to John or Jane Q. Public? Do they honestly have a stake in this stuff?
The reality is, these haphazard moments in time have zero bearing on anyone’s life.
Now, the bulk of the time, I neither know nor care what’s going on in the world. But contrary to the continual claims of my wife and family, I’m not stupid.
I understand that in tough economic times or times of war, both of which we sure as spinach are in, everyone is looking for a little escape from the daily hobnail boots to the groin. So it’s easy to get a little carried away in the fantasy world of mansions, limousines, Max Factor and nose candy. But the last time this many brainless zombies got carried away to such an extent, some smacked ass named Jones was doling out free samples of Kool-Aid.
I mean, come on people, how about paying a little more attention to the “stars” that share actual living space with you? How about idolizing the people who save greyhounds, or feed the poor or care for the elderly?
It sure ain’t glamorous and it won’t get its own feature story on “ET,” but it beats ogling the TV to get the lowdown on Michael Jackson’s postmortem penis size.
I’m pretty sure he had one.


0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home