Reality Bites (the Dust)

I knew a guy once who thought he’d turned into a lamp. Forty years ago, reality was a moving target depending upon your influence of choice, be it Maui Wowie, Owsley acid, The Teachings of Don Juan, the Vietnam War, Russell Means, Germaine Greer, Abby Hoffman, Timothy Leary or Richard Nixon.

Most of us held on by our fingernails.  Until now.

Recent news indicates we’ve completely lost our grip. According to a Pew Foundation survey, Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, the hilarious faux-news show and satirical spin on daily happenings, is now considered as trustworthy a broker of the news as Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather or Anderson Cooper.

Help me out here. What does comedy have to do with news? Apparently…plenty.

C’mon, this is like saying Judge Judy is the greatest jurist or, Steve Carrel the smartest boss. It’s like saying Major League is the best baseball movie ever made or Life of Brian the greatest religious epic.

How did we get here??

1. Media let us down. We’ve been hoodwinked by a compromised journalism creed. There have been too many examples of plagiarism or outright deception, making us question the truth. Newspapers are the worst offenders.

2. Distorted coverage pretending to be news. With “news/commentary” from infected fistulae like Bill O’Reilly of Fox and MSNBC’s Keith Olberman, Fox’s antimatter, it’s tough to distinguish trash-spewing political agendas from fact.

3. Disconnect between news and our daily lives. Reality has lost its relevance in America because we’re so insulated from it. We’re a society of civic complacency, lacking serious interest or responsibility for digesting or understanding news.

4. We’re all web junkies. The Atlantic cover story, “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?” has it right. We’ve lost our intellectual curiosity and become hyper-dependent on our search buddy who takes us only where we want to go.

5. If it ain’t funny, it sucks. And the more crude and stupid, the better. We’ve cartoonized everything. We love you Butthead. We love you Bart. Jon Stewart for president!! Ace Ventura for VP!! Let’s make Goofy secretary of state. That’ll put Putin right where we want him.

Think about it. The Founding Fathers of the Fourth Estate: Cronkite and Murrow, Sevareid and Reasoner, Huntley and Brinkley, Jennings, Koppel, Lehrer, Mudd, et al…replaced by a joke.

Excuse me for getting all Mr. Serious on you, but if you’re not worried about free speech, you should be.

Not okay means not okay.

I remember when Bill Clinton got caught with his pants down. Personally, I was appalled that the President of the United States had so terribly misjudged his sense of duty to the office by combining pizza and whoopee in the oval office. I had friends, many powerful and well-to-do friends who pooh-poohed the situation, saying, “Big deal, it’s a bag ‘o shells. Kennedy was doing it every fifteen minutes while Jackie was up hanging the drapes.” Whistling while she worked no doubt.

So now our new Democrat adulterer for the day is Eliot Spitzer, the mad dog Wall Street reformer turned governor of New York. Several expensive call girls later (whose money was it anyway?) he decides to resign, with his loyal dog—I mean wife—wagging her tail at his side.

It’s bad enough that Spitzer isn’t sitting atop a rail, dripping with pine tar, getting ridden out of Manhattan with a proper send-off. What really drove me nuts was that the other magazine at this company decided to run an asinine “boys will be boys” blog suggesting that all men want to do it and why don’t we just admit it. Furthermore we shouldn’t be shocked that, well, all men want to do it and so…well it just goes to show you?

AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The thing is, all men do want to do it. A highly spiritual Jimmy Carter said it 30 years ago. We all lust in our hearts. Duh. And, we all do it. With our wives or in committed, loving relationships. It takes more than a weak man overcome by desire to do what Spitzer has done. It takes a letch, a pompous, morally bankrupt jerk. This cad held significant public office, whose attainment was based primarily on a righteousness that bordered on fanaticism. To casually betray the confidence and trust of his family and constituents for several very expensive rolls in the hay is reprehensible. Particularly because of the sham persona he represented to the public. He lied, he cheated, he stole.

Eliot Spitzer should be prosecuted like any “john” on any street corner. Spitzer is Jimmy Swaggart. Spitzer is a guy we guys despise. He’s not a man. He’s weak. He’s a coward. He knows better. How could you be anything but yellow if you had to drag your poor wife out to that podium with you? Spitzer is not everyman. I know good men. Lots of them. They’d no more jump some pricey chick’s bones than rob a bank or kill somebody. Never say it’s okay. Never snicker about it. It’s not okay… Never.

Things I Don't Care About

I don't care that the latest Minnesota Poll shows many of you feeling peachy keen with Governor Pawlenty's handling of the I-35 bridge collapse. Should Lieutenant Governor Carol Molnau take the full blame for this disaster, having led the DOT? Probably. But what of the others who share in the complicity? Should we lay all blame on the squishy ground at doltish Carol's feet? If government were a business…oh, if only.

I don't care that Fadela Amara, a French cabinet socialist, is going to resign because the French government is considering a DNA test for immigrants wanting to move to France claiming to have blood relatives in the country. A blood test for French citizenship—not a bad exchange, unless of course you have something to hide. It reminds me of the same concerns employees often have over companies monitoring their e-mail and Internet use.

I don't care if it's not PC to want troublemakers, hoodlums, and bullies forced off the streets of downtown Minneapolis. We citizens have a right to enjoy the fantastic entertainment and hospitality that Minneapolis has to offer, without worrying about our personal safety. Do you know what 800-pound gorillas do for tourism and commerce?

I don't care that employees panicked and rebelled at US Cellular when their CEO declared Friday "no e-mail day." As psychologists point out, e-mail is a dependency for most of us. It dominates our workday, in productive and non-productive ways. Millions of hugely successful businesspeople survived just fine before e-mail technologies were invented. What would your day be like without being dominated by e-mail or the web?

I don't care that the latest trend in human resources allows for more inter-office romance. As long as the company gets its pound of flesh—a full days work—why would management give a rip if their employees found love, happiness, excitement, or downright gut-wrenching emotional pain down the street, or in the cube down the hall?

I don't care what Anne Coulter says, although her comments on Donny Deutsch's show reminded me how snotty, demeaning, degrading, divisive, objectionable, and wrong she usually is. If Ms. Coulter had been the CEO of a company, her board would have fired her before she left the TV studio.

I don't care that Scott Clark's lawyer thinks Scott is "a fine young man who made a horrible mistake." You may recall Scott was the drunken lad who ripped the head off of a live duck in the pond at the Embassy Suites hotel in St. Paul. We hear Scott someday wants to have a career. Just how much distance is there between being a duck head ripper-offer and a fine young man? Enough to eliminate Scott from our prospective employee roster. His lawyer thinks he's swell; maybe he'll hire him.