A Friend’s Observation:

This is an email that I received from a friend of mine:

Here's my question: the day following a crucial election, one where there will be significant changes to many of our day to day lives-why on earth is Britney Spear's impending divorce getting nearly as much press time as the voting results??? Seriously, I was watching CNN last night trying to get the information on who won the Tester/Burns race, and the runner at the bottom of the screen switched to Britney and K-Fed's separation. Good Lord! Why do I care? They are both white trash and were a car wreck from the very beginning. I can only imagine that it is was presented because people wanted to know. Doesn't that make you proud to be an American? :) No wonder people in other countries get irritated with us.

I’ll address this in two parts:

Part 1 – The Entertainment Phenomenon

Quite simply put, American’s place a higher value on entertainment (as a whole) than anything else….including politics, religion, family values, core values, etc. I’ve written about this before. It’s why Britney Spears was getting major coverage over the elections. It’s why athletes make millions of dollars while emergency services people (fireman, police officers, EMT’s, etc.), school teachers, and renowned physicists, engineers, and medical researchers make jack shit.

We’d rather be lulled into a semi-catatonic state watching TV, playing video games, or reading why Paris Hilton’s dog has hair extensions than worrying about the day to day happenings of the world right outside our front door. We have become fat, lazy and complacent with our MTV, fantasy football, and escape from-reality reality tv shows.

PS - the fat chick is Britney Spears....

Part 2 – Why Other Countries are Irritated with us.

I suppose there are many reasons for this, but in my travels it has pretty much come down to two things:

1 – they are jealous of what we have in the U.S. This is minor, but they don’t like our success and they don’t like our politics and the fact that we are THE dominant world power. Take that however you like it.

2 – more importantly, though, is the fact that we are a bunch of fat, lazy, complacent MTV watching assholes that feel our way of life is best and that we have to ram it down everybody else’s throats.