The Age of Unimportance

The Jay Cutler-Denver Broncos debacle has got me thinking about how far we've come as a society....and it's not necessarily in a good way. Over the past decade or so, we as a society have become frivolous in the manner in which we classify celebrities. Time was, to be someone of legitimate relevance, you had to be an A-List actor or actress or a politician or entertainer. The only time athletes would ever venture into the world of Page Six worthiness would be if they found themselves dabbling in Hollywood via an acting career or marrying into a Hollywood lifestyle. We used to marvel at guys like Joe Namath and Michael Jordan because they were bigger than just sports figures. They transcended the game. Now, every high school junior with a 40 inch vertical thinks he's LeBron James.

The internet has emerged as a quick medium for the general public to get up-to-date news to a engine that can make stars out of average Joes. With the popularity of the internet dwarfing magazines and newspapers and even television, the latter three platforms now need to stay relevant by breaking stories that aren't really news and making celebrities out of people who aren't really that important. Think about the people who dominate the covers of your magazine stand. Time was, a single mother of eight children was a courageous woman who did what she could to make ends meet to feed her family. She was a normal person in abnormal circumstances. Now, two-bit hookers like the Octo-Mom and the wife from Jon and Kate Plus 8 are front page news.....and for what? What makes them relevant in our every day lives? In the worst economy in nearly a century, should we really be celebrating women having babies they can't afford to upkeep? The American public has morphed into bored, lifeless individuals who become suckers for a pretty face and interesting story. We made a celebrity out of Cpt. Sully because he crashed a plane into a lake and didn't kill anybody.

Reality television is largely to blame. Nearly two decades ago, MTV launched The Real World, which was popular because it presented a different form of entertainment. These were supposedly real people from different backgrounds who were forced to live under one roof in front of America and what came out of those shows in the beginning had alot of relevance because it presented real-life issues that fans of the show can bare witness to. There was Pedro in Real World San Francisco, who was a gay man dying of AIDS and every week was a look into the life of a man battling a disease that we didn't quite understand. Early on, alot of the seasons presented racial overtones with the constant pairings of different races who didn't quite understand each other because of a lack of exposure to one another. Now, not only has The Real World become a haven for drunken three-somes and sideshow freaks, but its popularity has spawned hundreds of other shows. Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against drunken threesomes, but how can we stand on a moral high ground and denounce the evils of other countries when our TGIF is watching bimbos getting railed in a hot tub on national television? I hate to be the "What about the kids?" guy, but what message are we sending to the nation's youth? That if you want to be famous, all you have to do is be willing to eat bull dong and let cockroaches crawl up every crevice of your body? What happened to going to school and actually BECOMING something? Are we so desperate for a cheesy love story that we're willing to spend our nights watching a has-been like Bret Michaels attempt to find groupie love not once, not twice but THREE TIMES on national TV!? How can this doofus really expect to find the woman of his dreams through a sea of broads who are willing to deep-throat him for some screen time? At no point in our lives does it ever occur to us that maybe we should find a different source of entertainment? Who are Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian? They're rich, attractive girls who were skanky enough to bone on tape.....so we HAD to give them reality shows. Do our lives suck that bad that we find THESE people important?

Then there are shows like American Idol. Now, I don't have much of a problem with American Idol except for the fact that, like Real World, its popularity have spawned a crazy amount of bite-offs like "America's Got Talent" and "So You Think You Can Sing" and all of these crappy shows that only exist to give C-level celebrities like David Hasselhoff employed and given opportunities to freak shows who would otherwise be flipping burgers at Wendy's. It's also hard to give credibility to a show whose runner-ups outsell the winners. How motivated can you possibly be if you're in the Top 10 and you know that, even if you're the next person voted off, you'll still score a record deal and sell albums because you already have an established fan base? Doesn't that kind of spoil the sense of competition if someone can finish 6th and go platinum? And what's the point of having judges if America is just going to vote for the ambiguously gay emo kid with the funky hair who just did the 6,000th rendition of "Cry Me A River"? Sigh.

And really, I could go on and on with this. Perhaps I'm in the minority because I feel sad for America. I feel sad for America because our idea of quality programming is watching some MySpace groupie try to find a shot at love amongst a group of fellow internet hook-up shitbirds. Or maybe I feel sad because we've become a nation of people who no longer feel the need to try very hard. Perhaps that's why we're in a financial crisis. Who needs Wall Street when I can make millions making DVDs of college chicks whipping out their knockers? Of course there's no money to save GM, all our money is going to making sure Bret Michaels' love bus has enough room to fit an STD-infused orgy. Who would have thought that fame would be cheaper than gas? The ironic part of "reality television" is that there's no reality to it. We don't choose to showcase the lives of the thousands who lost their jobs in the worst economy in generations. We don't choose to shoot the "Real World" in Detroit? Why? Because that's too real for us.

Sincerely, Your Favorite Blogger's Favorite Blogger, Dave Leonardis.