teevee

I never got a chance to touch on last week’s saga of “Balloon Boy”, so I have to mention now how this is so indicative of the problems with our society.

We now live in a country where people will do anything to get on the teevee. The Heene family is the epitome of this new lust, and now that Mayumi Heene has admitted to it all being a hoax she makes her family the poster child of this sick obsession for fame that plagues our society today.

Our capitalistic economy fuels this need for fame. People are willing to go on national television and embarrass themselves all for the rush of being seen. The Henees did it by appearing on Wife Swap and countless others have done the same by appearing on the plethora of other “reality shows”. Even news organizations have fueled this frenzy. “Hey capture it on your cellphone and send it to us!”. Everyone seems to want that minute of fame if its threw the embarrassment of reality tv or making that YouTube hit.

So when did our society become so obsessed with this need? It seems like families should have a lot more to worry about than just getting famous through some scheme. What’s your take on this and what it says about the American culture?

That big protest we heard about last night – the one that would force NBC to fire Letterman by show of the will of the people? Well we now have a new definition of fail:

A protest rally against David Letterman over a failed joke about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her daughter attracted more members of the media than protesters Tuesday afternoon.

A crowd of 15 protesters upset with the late night comic held signs and occasionally shouted as they stood across the street from Letterman's studio.

(emphasis added)

Wow I bet NBC is just shaking in their shoes over that mob! Maybe we should line up a protest in support of Dave and to denounce that ridiculous statement that Palin released when she “accepted” Dave’s apology. The one that was written like a stump speech. Sorry but Palin made it obvious yesterday that this whole thing wasn’t about outrage, it was about politics.

And that is worse than any botched joke.

Its kind of ironic that this is going on at the same time the whole Cheney/Panetta thing is happening. I think the same analogy could now be applied to the Palins. They would let something horrible happen to one of their kids if it would work for the benefit of Sarah’s political future. Sarah Palin proved that yesterday. She didn’t care about what Letterman said, just that she would get some face time of the teevee. And these people protesting. Well we can only consider them as her enablers.

FOX let people text in messages to appear on their ticker New Year’s Eve. If the message was approved by their “moderators”, then it would appear on live, national teevee. WooHoo. So what kind of messages did they approve? This kind:

A new year and a new low for Rupert and his merry pact of racist assholes.