In this day and age, it is damn near impossible to only watch, listen to, or read "real news". It used to be that if you tuned in to the News (which for me was either ABC, NBC, or CBS since we lived so far out in the middle of nowhere we didn't have the option of cable), you knew you were going to get the hard stuff. The real stuff. The stuff that actually informed you about serious matters around the country and around the world. The stuff that made you a better and smarter person for knowing it. The stuff that could even help you in school once in a while. The stuff that we as kids found boring but that we as adults tend to wish there was more of. And there was Extra, ET, Inside Edition, or some other such crap news knock-off show for the other stupid stuff.
I try really hard to avoid the stupid news. Because its stupid. And I can't help but worry that I am going to get stupider every time I inadvertently learn something about Honey Boo Boo, or which professional athlete has now been caught lying about using PED's, or what the hell twerking is. And by the way, it doesn't need its own name. If you DO need to give it a name, twerking is no where near as accurate as "I plan on becoming one of your baby mamas by the end of this dance and you won't even have to buy me dinner first". I digress.
I don't like feeling stupid after watching or reading the news. And its incredibly frustrating to seek out knowledge and information - because I was always taught that it is always a good thing to go into the world armed with knowledge, because knowledge is power - only to find myself surrounded by stupidity.
And I can't help but feel like we can attribute the decline of American society as a whole (its overall stupidification in general) to the increasing stupidity of our "news", because after all, we get our news from what's actually going on in our society, what is important to our society. Actually I don't think its the news itself that is getting stupid. I think its what people are doing IN the news that is becoming increasingly stupid. I can't help but wonder if the reporters would be reporting on stories of people doing smart things and using common sense (like NOT taking assault rifles that were obtained illegally and shooting up a crowd of innocent people trying to watch a neighborhood basketball game at their local park) if there were more people actually fucking DOING smart things and using common sense.
I know there are actually a plethora of things to blame for the overall decline of our society, and everyone has their favorite hot topic to reference for it ... taking "Christ" out of Christmas, taking God and Jesus out of our schools, violent video games, drugs, the crappy state of our education system and what it says about our whacked out educational priorities, technology taking over our lives, kids who don't play outside anymore...you name it. There are a SHIT TON of reasons society is going to hell in a hand basket. But I truly believe that it is for one simple reason.
Common sense is gone. Its no longer a priority. And we are raising an entire generation of kids who, lets be honest, don't fucking need any common sense. Why?? Because no matter WHAT they do, they aren't responsible. They had a good reason or valid excuse to do whatever stupid thing they got caught doing. They are a victim of someone else who is completely to blame for their situation. Blame the parents, blame the teachers, blame the victim for pressing charges, blame the witnesses for being "rats", blame the coffee for having the nerve to be hot, blame blame blame blame blame. And this lack of complete common sense has permeated so many areas of our lives that it has become newsworthy. It used to be that when someone was a dumb ass and did something totally stupid, they were just an idiot. Now, they get their own TV Reality show, become a celebrity, and make millions. 2 words for you - Kim. Kardashian. I rest my case.
What qualifies as news now is really just stories of people being stupid or doing stupid things or being the victim of someone's stupidity. As Jon Stewart points out in the clip linked below, this level of non-common-sense-stupidity is even starting to effect those who deliver the news to us! http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-17-2013/wrongnado---cnn
Here are some things I've heard or read in the "news" recently that have confirmed my worst fears about a complete lack of common sense in our society and the overall stupidification of people in general.....
1. When you have people who are willing to stand in line for 2 days just to get the newest upgrade in unnecessary technology, because the phone they waited in line for 3 days to get 9 months ago must be terribly, terribly out of date, and THEN pay ridiculously outrageous prices just to be able to say they own a newer version, common sense is on vacation and people are stupid. How bad can the state of our economy actually be? These people obviously don't have jobs, and don't NEED jobs, since they have asshat loads of money to spend on a phone that is 6 months newer than the one they spent asshat loads of money on less than a year ago. Stupidification.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/20/20597661-iphone-fans-line-up-around-the-world-again-this-time-with-a-golden-eye?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=2
2. When there are kids who break into a home when the owner isn't there, throw a huge raging party, vandalize and destroy the property as well as steal from the home, take PICTURES of themselves doing this, POST these pictures all over social media, act shocked and amazed that the owner of the house re-posted these pictures along with pictures he took of the damage himself, and then their parents threaten to SUE the homeowner for re-posting the pictures that THEIR kids took while doing something ILL-FUCKING-LEGAL, something is SERIOUSLY stupidified in our world!!! Seriously!!
http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/ex-nfl-player-brian-holloway-threatened-with-lawsuits-for-posting-pictures-of-alleged-vandals-092013
And here is where the cycle perpetuates, because these parents are rewarding stupidity. They are not only saying "we don't care that you were stupid", they are saying "you have a God given right to lack all common sense, and be stupid, and do stupid things, and it is the responsibility of others to take care of you in your stupidity". It just hurts my head to think about.
3. A woman put the lid on the ketchup too tightly. Her husband didn't like it. She's now dead. Nuf said.
http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/news-national/20130920/wife.slain.ketchup.lid/
Stupid scares me. Because you can't reason with stupid. You can't explain to stupid the error of its ways. And you can't fix stupid. The best you can hope for is to control and contain the damage done by stupid. Its like being the parent of a toddler. You can't make the toddler NOT be a toddler. The toddler is going to do all of the awful, annoying, painful, God-for-saken things that toddlers do that make parents cry themselves to sleep in a drunken stupor for about 3 years straight. That is the nature of the toddler beast. That is why you see frazzled parents of toddlers everywhere who haven't showered in a week trailing after their youngsters with their arms spread wide like they are chasing after a flock of chickens. Control and contain the damage. Thats the best they can hope for. Because if they do that, they make it one more day. They survive to face the next one. "Blood. Is there blood? There's no blood? Ok then we are good." Can't tell you the number of times I've said that, and my kids are far from toddlers.
So my hope is that we can all survive another day of stupid. That we can control and contain the damage done by the perpetrators of stupidity with as few casualties as possible. And maybe.....JUST maybe.....there will be some people who can actually LEARN something from the stupidification of others and decide they want better for themselves. And hopefully these people will go on a personal quest for common sense. And maybe, when they find this ever illusive common sense we have heard so much about but have never actually witnessed ourselves, they can even start to share it with others, since there is obviously such a hugely common-sense-lacking population out there. It wouldn't be hard to do. I'm thinking sharing common sense with the "needy" could be done as easily as we share assault weapons with felons. We'll just put common sense in a van at the end of a dark alley and tell people its against the law to have it.
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