News Alert: Paris Hilton Dominates, America Disintegrates!

Since I count myself as being somewhat of a “curmudgeon at large” and since I do have a sincere concern about the world my grandchildren will grow up in, and since the Paris Hilton affair reflects as one writer put it: “The decline of western civilization and we are watching it live.”, and since you would expect that I would have some thoughts about all of this, so, here goes….

I write knowing the risk that I will be doing exactly what the news media do when they decry everyone else covering this story while they are showing a variety of pictures and clips in the background. You see, they are only reporting the fact of how awful it is that others are stooping so low as to make this a priority news item while they aren’t, they are only spending fifteen minutes with Paris plastered all over the screen telling you why they are much too dignified to do such a thing.

Surely there is a lesson in here somewhere. This is how I came to know about this latest Paris Hilton fascination. I was at my desk working with my PC on in the background. I had CNN Pipeline up in a small box just to keep up with headlines. CNN was covering the G8 Summit meeting and in particular, doing a drill down on the sharp rhetoric and potential risks associated with this facedown President Putin is doing with our president regarding the missile defense shield. The reporter was deep into this assessment when suddenly CNN broke away to a live news conference being held in Los Angeles. A spokesperson for the LA County Sheriff’s office began speaking in a tone that made you wonder what calamity had befallen the left coast, I mean the west coast. Was it another 911 incident? Had there been some chemical explosion or perhaps the ‘big one earthquake’ had finally occurred? No, nothing like this, the G8 had to wait because he was there to answer questions about Paris Hilton being released from jail due to some medical ailment and would be confined to her home and monitored via an electronic ankle bracelet. The world could be on the verge of regressing back to a cold-war status but Americans would rather hear about Paris Hilton.

We somehow made it through this worldwide sideshow event only to get it back in our face when she was forced to return to the jailhouse. Just when I was beginning to respect the fact that Brian Williams on NBC refused to even mention Paris regarding the first story, but on the second one here’s what came up immediately following the lead story,… Here is Brian speaking:

"If you were watching television today then you saw it happen: during the Pentagon's announcement about general Pace was being made, many of the cable news networks broke away from what was judged to be a more urgent breaking story out of Los Angeles…"

This is another example of the lamenting over how the story is covered while you are covering the story yourself routine. How bogus is that? This incident reminds us of the recent debacle involving Anna Nicole Smith. She was used like a punching bag and when her users finished with her, they discarded her like yesterday’s newspaper. What a poor soul! How sad that we as a nation have degenerated to where we have become obsessed with people whose claim to fame involves being doped up, drunk, naked, or involved in perverted lifestyles as their only contribution to life. Sad. Paris may be different in that she may be the manipulator instead of the manipulated, but in any event the social fabric of there being any standard of behavior at all is coming unraveled before our very eyes.

The other day my wife and I were watching an old quiz show hosted by Bill Cullen called “Child’s Play”. The adult contestants had to try and guess the word being described by children aged 6 to 10 years old. The children were not allowed to say the word, only to describe it. What was amazing to me was how their explanations of what a word meant reflected the influence of their family, school, friends, and the culture they lived in. This program was recorded in the early 1980’s and most of what the children said was innocent but still very much reflected the environment that surrounded them. Their unpretentious, comical, and sometimes provocative ‘real world’ way to describe a word is what made this program entertaining.

One has to wonder what this program would be like if it were made today. The thoughts and ideas of children 6 to 10 years old might very well include a Paris Hilton perspective and that’s something I would rather not even think about. More later…..