Our Country's Love of Stupid Shit

If there was one thing I enjoyed immidiately following 9/11 was that the nation took this somber tone. No one cared about scandals; cheating politicians, murderous husbands, what-who-was-putting-up-their-nose, etc. People focused again on what mattered most in life, which was community.

But almost seven years later, we've pretty much reverted back to our pre-September of 2001 ways. You can't turn on a television without seeing some celebrity leaving rehab, or watching Britnay Spears self destruct or whatever. We've folded back into the days about caring about stupid shit.

I understand that we, collectively, need a distraction from the mundane aspects of our lives. And hey, I'll browse through the entertainment section on Huffingtonpost.com once a day myself, but as a whole, we are so unbelievably fucking consumed with high amounts of talentless ridiculousness that we're practically begging Al Qaeda to blow up one of our shopping malls.

Americans love stupid shit, and it's been showing for years, and by "years" I mean since about 1971, when hippies stopped caring about the world, and started caring about cocaine. Since then, we as a nation have been inandated with such excessive bullshit that we willingly swallow it piecemeal and grin happily as we chew.

And this is how we ended up in Iraq.

Why do we give such a big shit about little shit like some hick climbing his way up the steep slope that is "American Idol?" How come everytime Lindsay Lohan leaves a Rodeo Drive couture, there's a fucking helicopter following her? ...America, we need to refocus.

There was this ad campagne when "The Sopranos" were just wrapping up; it was called "The Family vs. Your Family" as was largely featured in print ads as well as in commericals on HBO. The ad went like this: On one page you were first presented with a list of three questions pretaining to the HBO hit drama, such as "Who Shot Tony" and "What's the name of Adrianna's Club?" and so on. You'd flip the page and there'd be one question: "What's your grandfather's middle name?"

I knew more about the intricacies of a fictional crime family than I did about my own, and I think that's what the ad was getting at in a round-about way. I was stunned, as I sat on the toilet trying to think of grandfather's first name, let alone middle. I too was a victim of caring about stupid shit.

I'm not saying we should totally boycott TMZ.com or People Magazine, but we don't need the "text2phone" updates every time Paris Hilton puts on oversized sunglasses or blows some douchebag. I'm just saying that for once in this country's history, could we possibly start focusing on the important things in our lives before we're reminded about it later by the next bridge collapse or terrorist attack?