This seems to be the year that everyone had to get their 15 minutes of fame, or rather, shame. From Octomom to Tiger Woods to Jon & Kate to Balloon Boy to the White House party crashers, everywhere it seemed that there were bizarre attempts by desperate people to land some sort of reality show that could make them rich quick. With the deepening recession, I suppose this isn't really surprising, but still, it seemed that everytime you turned around, some other weird scandal was being revealed, either by ordinary people wanting a reality show of their own to celebrities making spectacular falls from grace. I don't know what about this year precipitated this, but it sure has made for interesting media fodder in our now 24 hour news cycle of wall to wall coverage of non-news. There was hardly a month this year that some ridiculous non-news item would be blared all over the Internet and cable media stations non-stop until there was not at thing more that could be said about it. We Americans sure are obsessed with a lot of absolute nothing, but in a year that saw continued record job losses and a continuing bleak economic picture, anything that even vaguely resembled escapist news was probably a welcome diversion from the harsh realties our country has been facing for the past several years, even if it was a lot of ballyhoo about absolutely nothing. It just amazes me how utterly idiotic the media can be about fawning attention over people who are trying to do outrageous things to garner attention. And of course, the media, needing to fill up 24 hours of news, will pounce on anything just to fill time, even if it's a balloon boy hoax or a couple of socialite wannabes crashing a White House state dinner. Honestly, aren't there more important things to focus on, such as health care reform or global warming? Could you imagine if people spent as much time obsessing over those instead of celebrity wannabes looking to gain some ill gotten attention for doing some damned foolish thing? Wouldn't this be a far better world if we put that much energy into solving real problems instead of fawning over publicity stunts by people looking to score some fast cash by so doing? Food for thought as we enter this new year in the coming hours.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Farewell, 2009, and good riddance!
This seems to be the year that everyone had to get their 15 minutes of fame, or rather, shame. From Octomom to Tiger Woods to Jon & Kate to Balloon Boy to the White House party crashers, everywhere it seemed that there were bizarre attempts by desperate people to land some sort of reality show that could make them rich quick. With the deepening recession, I suppose this isn't really surprising, but still, it seemed that everytime you turned around, some other weird scandal was being revealed, either by ordinary people wanting a reality show of their own to celebrities making spectacular falls from grace. I don't know what about this year precipitated this, but it sure has made for interesting media fodder in our now 24 hour news cycle of wall to wall coverage of non-news. There was hardly a month this year that some ridiculous non-news item would be blared all over the Internet and cable media stations non-stop until there was not at thing more that could be said about it. We Americans sure are obsessed with a lot of absolute nothing, but in a year that saw continued record job losses and a continuing bleak economic picture, anything that even vaguely resembled escapist news was probably a welcome diversion from the harsh realties our country has been facing for the past several years, even if it was a lot of ballyhoo about absolutely nothing. It just amazes me how utterly idiotic the media can be about fawning attention over people who are trying to do outrageous things to garner attention. And of course, the media, needing to fill up 24 hours of news, will pounce on anything just to fill time, even if it's a balloon boy hoax or a couple of socialite wannabes crashing a White House state dinner. Honestly, aren't there more important things to focus on, such as health care reform or global warming? Could you imagine if people spent as much time obsessing over those instead of celebrity wannabes looking to gain some ill gotten attention for doing some damned foolish thing? Wouldn't this be a far better world if we put that much energy into solving real problems instead of fawning over publicity stunts by people looking to score some fast cash by so doing? Food for thought as we enter this new year in the coming hours.
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