Thursday, April 24, 2008

General Ramblings

I've been doing a lot of work on my youngest's room while I'm off this week; not that you care, but I say that to say this. While I was working on it this morning my wife had the TV on in the other room and I could hear The View playing in the background. From the time the show signed on until the second commercial break, they were arguing about whether or not black people should vote for Obama because he's black or if black women (and women in general) should vote for Clinton because she's a woman, which would trump the race issue because they're more emotionally committed to the gender issue.

I keep trying to imagine a scenario that would make me care what they (or any other of the teaming hordes of pop culture figures out there today for that matter) think about politics. They may or may not be well informed and thoughtful. But if I cannot make up my own mind based on my own ability to reason and respond with any more efficiency than to require their input I believe that I will just not vote.

I also keep trying to figure out where in time our country became so ridiculously captivated by every little nuance of the lives of famous people. We and the pop culture media have robbed them of their lives and privacy and someone seems to have stolen our desire to be intellectually relevant; or to at least not be intellectually dormant. We have become a nation of stalkers who live vicariously through the lives of people who are often emotionally frail and, quite frankly, not all that crapping interesting outside of the fact that they got rich and famous.

Enjoy the people around you. Idolize the heroes in your community. Live your life, not someone else's.

Pray for peace.
Mike

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