The rotting of America’s collective brain

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I’ve been going to the gym regularly and like all gyms these days, there are tons of TVs tuned to a variety of shows. I always have my ipod going, but I can still see the shows. It’s disgusting what is on TV from 7-8. Access Hollywood, TMZ.com, Hollywood Insider – it’s a isn’t surprising that the citizens of this country are so uneducated.

What most of us a provided as “news” is nothing of the sort. Look at CNN.com – guaranteed you’ll find one of their top stories about some pop star or some movie starlet gone astray. We have a Presidential election, we have a Iraq, we have crises in Kenya and Pakistan. Yet they’ve gone into a feeding frenzy over a certain pop-star’s current personal issues. Everyday – an update on her. The day she was hospitalized was the scene outside her home was a sin. The leeches trying to make a buck. And let’s not mention her friends, like Dr. Phil.

If you want to see the slow crumbling of a society, tune in at 7.

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  • http://www.cynicsgirl.blogspot.com/ Cyn

    First of all, that going to the gym regularly thing — cut that out. You’re making the rest of us look bad.

    Anyway, I couldn’t agree with you more. The breathlessly exclamatory and inflamatory (insert your choice of word that ends with “tory” here) voiceovers that accompany these stories makes the “reporting” seem even seedier.

    We can look to psychology, blame human nature, whatever…and Dr. Phil would be happy to explain how people take a certain pleasure in seeing others’ train wrecks to feel better about their own lives.

    But going beyond “Why do we care?” (or does anybody care?) the coverage has gotten to the point of feeling dirty just being witness to it. Even as the Brits and LiLos seem to be self-destructing of their own free will, I can’t help but think the constant media attention is another push over the edge. It’s all just sad.

  • http://abbondanza.blogspot.com/ kristen

    I think it’s definitely a push over the edge. These girls are far from saints (very very very far), but I think the level of scrutiny they are living under is completely unprecedented. Grace Kelly was apparently quite the scarlet lady, but we never had to know about it. Plenty of celebrities back in the day got to be gay, sluts, addicts, crazy, whatever, in the privacy of their homes. The stuff that is reported on now as news used to be the stuff of a late-life tell-all autobiography.

    With cell phone cameras, their every bowel movement gets reported. I’m surprised someone hasn’t lost it and strangled Pat O’Brien or killed a papparazzo yet. It’s coming though. LiLo’s bad driving is a mere warm-up.

    I have always loved pop culture and keeping up on the latest gossip, but the last year has just left a bad taste in my mouth. I avoid LiLo and Paris stories like the plague. The whole Anna Nicole thing made the evening shows unbearable. And my poor crazy Brit Brit depresses the hell out of me. It’s not fun when people are getting hurt, and I hate to feel like I’m part of the reason they’re under such scrutiny.

    Also, I have this weird thing about needing someone to scrutinize this President, this Congress, this whackadoodle war. Maybe if our country had less resources devoted to starlet crotch cams and more to reporting on what’s really happening around us, the average American wouldn’t be as ignorant. There’s a lot of people dying right now. None of them have had a hit single, but the reasons they are dying, namely crime and a corrupt war, have far more to do with where we are going than a small group of rich cokeheads.

  • http://abbondanza.blogspot.com/ kristen

    And also, Dr. Phil? Really?

    I think Richard Simmons would be a much better interventionist.

  • grace

    I’m with you, Kristen. I used to have the guilty pleasure of reading People magazine every few weeks, and now there’s such an overload of celebrity hounding that I don’t even do that anymore. It all feels really icky and sad. Becoming an actor used to be a respected art form. Now it looks like a living nightmare.