Knee Deep in the Hooah!

Thank you to “Aubrey” for THIS link to the video I reference in this post, and for the note telling me about it. It was a very timely note for sure.

This is not the first rant, nor will it be the last, about our media’s infatuation with dead or whacked out movie stars. I would love to rant about all of the reasons why they seem to love to feed off of the dead in this ghoulish game of gossip, death and sexy stories of drug overdoses, suicide, or other various and sundry ways lives have tragically ended. Surely we must have some incredibly important reason to do this, right? Surely the media is justified in saying that they are only giving the public what they want (I agree with Williams in the clip — who is really the cart and who is really the horse here?)The only reason that I can possibly come up with for this morbid and disgusting fascination is nothing more than sick and convenient entertainment.We use tragedy, death, disease and immorality to get our kicks and giggles for the day. Movies aren’t enough. Reality TV shows, (which have nothing to do with reality — and isn’t reality what we are trying to escape when we watch TV?), gossip magazine shows, sitcoms, dramas — don’t forget the dramas!! — are available to us 24/7, and yet our media acts like the death of a movie star is the equivalent to losing someone whose contributions to society mean more than the other hundreds of people who die on a given day. Why is this?

I understand the need for entertainment, and I don’t begrudge it at all. I think that there are many benefits to enjoying a little down time from the daily grind and the stresses of life. It’s wonderful when people can watch a movie or a little television to unwind. I don’t know why I am still shocked or surprised at the disgusting feats the media will pull in order to get ratings. It really is a societal standard any more. Our media doesn’t always report the news — it often reports what amounts to nothing more than gossip.

This morning when I was exercising there was another NEWS FLASH! Surely it must be something extremely important to the entire Country, right? No. Instead it was the media ghouls drooling over the fact that Brittney Spears was found in some extremely sad and disturbing mental state at her home and needed care. Uhm, OK. I am a social worker who has put in time in the mental health arena — I am not being cold or uncaring here, but guess what? This sort of thing happens every single day. Every day there are people all over this Country who battle mental health issues. There are mothers who do not need to be around their children because of said struggles. There are families who are living some very devastating realities.Here’s my professional opinion (not that it matters a lick, but I feel I should offer it regardless), leave the girl alone, let her get the help she so obviously and desperately needs. Give her some privacy. I could care less about her music. I have never bought a single album of hers and I don’t think she has much talent at all, however, she is a human being and for the love of all things green and good, treat her as such. The world will continue to spin and humanity will continue forward without another shred of gossip about this young woman’s extremely tragic life. It’s not funny. It’s not entertaining, and no it does not make me feel better to hear about her mental health struggles (you know so I can shake my head in pity).

I know it’s asking a lot of our media, but I really wish they would use their brains and wit to inform and entertain instead of acting like a flock of buzzards circling the first obviously dead or distressed body they can find. Any buzzard can find a dead or almost dead corpse — it requires nothing more than having your nose tuned into the right smell!

The day that Ledger was found dead the headlines were plastered with it on every screen at the gym, and all of the major media outlets online! We had second by second updates. The news channels told us we couldn’t live another moment if we didn’t know exactly what happened up the actor’s very last breath. If you watched the coverage of all of the weeping and the devastation in our Country and had no sound and no captioning you would have guessed that we had lost a national treasure. You would have swore that we were Argentinians grieving the loss of Eva Peron! What will we ever do when a movie star dies? What will we do without his or her presence in this world to entertain us? We’ll do the next best thing and feed off of the dead body as long as we possibly can. Never mind that somewhere a family is grieving the loss of someone they truly love. No matter that they have to bury someone while trying to dodge and outsmart the paparazzi.

I wonder where the media was when we lost a real national treasure, or why they do not cover the fact that this person could not even be buried with a headstone identifying his remains? Where’s our tireless media when a war hero like General Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. passes away? Where is the non-stop coverage about him and how he requested to be buried in an unmarked grave and with no funeral so that protesters would not desecrate his burial site and upset his family? We have a war hero, who with his actions, bravery and valor ENDED the second world war and his passing from this life and into the next is barely a blip on the media radar screen.

If he had been a movie star with a drug addiction, mental health issues and could boast a child or six with various women then I imagine our media would have been chomping at the bit to tell his story. No scandal, no criminal record and nothing sexy at all — he got an “honorable mention” by the media because he lived his life as a responsible and honorable citizen who worked hard to serve his Country and his family. Oh well, sorry General Tibbets, but we couldn’t find a way to squeeze more than 10 seconds of reporting time for the story of your life. I guess we were all still pretty devastated from losing Anna Nichole or still devastated that her baby’s daddy wasn’t who we thought it should be. It was something like that anyway. I have said my peace — for now anyway.

Tags: Hollywood, memorial, military, veterans, war on terror //