Chris Rock is genius. Okay, maybe a comedic genius. See, the way he frames serious issues in a satirical way is a gift, an art. Rock forces you to think about these matters in a manner no one would otherwise see.
In one of his best rants, he chastises the presidency for creating societal fodder in various incidents to keep our “minds off the war.” He jokes that Bush sent the girl to Kobe’s room in Colorado; that Bush was responsible for Lacy Peterson’s death; and that Bush sent that little boy to the Neverland Ranch.
Oddly, it’s almost an accurate portrayal of our American society, and I wonder how this affects the attention we devote toward the issues that should garner the majority of our attention.
Here’s a sample.
Paris goes to jail. Lindsay Lohan racks up her 37th DUI. Don Imus uses the term “nappy headed ho.” Isaiah Washington says the word “faggot” in reference to a co-worker. Eddie Murphy attempts to be the biggest star needing to take a seat on Maury Povich’s couch.
There are a million quasi-important things we can – and do – indulge in daily. Rarely, do we ever focus on the most important issues. Rarely, do the idiocy and buffoonery we pay so much attention actually take their proper place.
Along State Line Road, a street which separates Kansas and Missouri, sits a house with a slew of American flags in its yard. I haven’t stopped to count seeing that might cause a wreck.
Thankfully, there’s a number in the yard representing the flags’ meaning. This number changes with the growing death toll of American soldiers in our Middle East conflicts.
That number is above 3,000. If you haven’t noticed, that total is greater than the number who passed on 9/11/2001 in New York City and Washington D.C. And for what? Because we “received faulty information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.“
Back here on the home front, we’re more consumed with making sure Paris Hilton remains in lockdown for her full sentence and what she has to say afterward on Larry King Live.
A few weeks ago, Michael Vick was indicted on federal dog-fighting charges, and things started to fall in a unique, but weird perspective. I realized our federal government and our American society have made it a high priority to pursue people who fight dogs rather than aid issues of far greater importance (and I’m not saying this shouldn’t have some importance at all). But it has snowballed into our next great not-so-veiled racial debate. White and black are somehow pointing fingers at each other at protests outside of Atlanta Falcons training camp over Michael Vick and dogs, a topic deserving of its own discussion.
You could drown in the coverage of Vick and his alleged mishaps. And it’s not going away anytime soon.
This got me thinking: Maybe Chris Rock was right. Maybe the feds really do create things people will deem important to keep what should be at the heart of the public perspective at bay. Then I thought again: “That’s impossible. The federal government wouldn’t do that.”
Then I remembered, this is the same federal government that is in its fifth year of pursuing Barry Bonds, the famed baseball player who just broke this country’s most hallowed sports record. Really, how long, and how much tax-payer money, does it take to figure out whether or not someone told a white lie? That should be the beginning of a bad joke, not societal fodder.
But it is, and it’s what we talk about. And because we banter about such frivolous things that are put before us by a dollar-driven media and the government, the number I occasionally drive by on State Line Road continues growing. And Chris Rock’s words seem more ingenious.
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