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About Us
American Idle/American Idol/American Ideal
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For most of my adult life but especially following the attack on America on September 11, 2001, I have watched the news and read the news and listened to the news trying to make some sense of this apparently crazy world I was brought into by my parents but you know what? There's no sense in the news anymore, if there ever was, and so I say there's no sense being a news junkie anymore - I'm wasting my time here on earth and as I get older that becomes more of a cardinal sin than ever.
And now there are millions of blogs and YouTube and Network 2 and still there's not much sense spending time watching most of it because though I enjoy a cat flushing the toilet more than most people - I love our cat Zane with a love that scares me - there are better things to do, like live. Many of you reading this are probably of the tribe that doesn't watch TV at all and to you I say maybe you've gotten it right all along. I love "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "The Sopranos" and used to love "Deadwood" and I love "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" but in general, TV is a vast waste-of-time-land. The line from that song about 500 channels and there's nothing on is all too often true - and the Internet seems to be determined to fight its way to the top of that category, too.
I cannot believe how badly the biggest news organizations on the web report stories. They usually don't add even a single photo or drawing, even of criminal suspects on the loose. Their videos are usually worthless and don't add anything to what you've read and sometimes you have to watch first an advertisement that is most inappropriate to the story you're about to watch. They don't report on stories that might cost them advertisers and the absence of anything vaguely related to spirituality and the most important truths of my life are nowhere to be seen. It doesn't matter how great the ratings of the TV show Medium are, anything related to the reality of life and death is too close to religion for these self-censors. It's so sad. The same problem exists in the realm of museums, too. They won't put on any show that might be controversial and so the most meaningless art is allowed to rise to the top because no one cares enough about it to make a fuss.
My biggest problem is that the greatest inventions in the history of our race are not being used properly to help us all DO SOMETHING about the insanity and the injustice that has been permitted to thrive in this world. The centralization of power in the hands of the corporations coupled with their refusal to use their power for the good of the people who own the airways they lease and buy the products they advertise, and our addiction to glamour and infotainment and the pop-culture's it-ain't-cool-to do-well-in-school slant and its denigration of getting involved politically on even the most minimal basis are putting the brakes on change.
American Idol gets 145 million votes per show and you're telling me that we need a Senate and a House of Representatives to do our voting for us? I don't think so. Way back in the 1980's I wrote a song called "Saturn Transit: Three Decades" that predicted that one day there would be phone-in voting that would finally enable true democracy to be tried in this country and I was correct, but instead of voting about how we want our nation to act and what we want our local governments to do for us we are voting for Sanjaya or some other singer on American Idol. It disgusts me but I can't let that disgust keep me from pointing out that the mechanism for effecting fundamental change in this country of laws exists, though it is not being used properly.
Here's the closing lyric from my "Saturn Transit:"
Though the means exist for true democracy they are not used.
The TV and the phone, once fused, will have this nation voting after Friday's News,
But they still refuse to bring this nation up to date.
I pray it's not too late to eliminate the hate!
A secure, verifiable national phone-in voting system could be figured out and implemented in a year or two, though do you think our congressional, state, and local "representatives" would allow it?
Since they wouldn't, there would have to be an interim period where the people's vote would appear next to their representative's name on the tally board and then the representative would have to cast their vote and they'd have to explain their disagreement with the will of their constituents if they voted against their wishes. It would be a start.
Remember, the great socio-anthropologist, Margaret Mead's saying that we should never doubt the ability of a small group of committed people to change the world and that that is the only kind of group that ever has changed the world. Unfortunately, what is unsaid in that brilliant observation is that a small group of committed terrorists can also change the world and, if we compare our lives today with pre-Sept 11, 2001, we can easily see that they have, indeed changed the world.
We can stop the terrorists and crazy people of this world from destroying freedom and the American Ideal, which includes equality for women and homosexuals and freedom from honor killings where 17 year old girls are stoned to death for daring to fall in love - how's that for a religion? Yes, I'm very angry and I have no use for stupidity, villainy, and evil in any form, even it cloaks itself in religion's name. But we are losing the battle against terrorism and venality and evil because we are good people who refuse to see that political correctness and kindness only work when you are dealing with rational people. You cannot negotiate with people who want you dead at any cost and are willing to lie and do anything to effect that end. I am a sensitive New Age guy if there ever was one, in fact, I'm psychic, so how's that for sensitivity? But I'm a sensitive New Age guy who grew up in Brooklyn during the 1950's, the time of the gang wars immortalized and sanitized by "West Side Story," and I know evil exists because stupid people do evil things and the only way to stop them is to stop them. Period. Not ask them to stop. I tired that and it got me beat up. Once.
I may be wrong but I have faith that the majority of Americans are smart and rational people and will do the right thing if they're presented with the truth and so let's use the media in all of its forms to give all of us a chance to present our views, not just the views of the talking heads that afflict our airways now.
If we are to ever truly become the United states of America, then we must re-energize our political process. And we will NEVER do that unless and until we make it as interesting and interactive as American Idol. Until then, we will have American Idle as our political process with people choosing to do anything other than get involved with politics, which has become a dirty word. We are politics and if it is dirty it is only because we have not shaken off the dirt that has fallen on us while we've slept like Rip Van Winkle as the ego-maniacs, the manic depressives, and the power mad have stolen political power from our sleeping hands. Wake up America. Change the channel to C-SPAN, add phone-in voting, and we'll finally have the realization of the American Ideal, not the American Idle. |
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