What do Americans value?
Charlie Sheen made a visit to my city of Atlanta last night for his train wreck of a self-aggrandizing tour. I had neither the time nor inclination to offer a review of the show. Unlike some Americans, I’m not willling to wade in the muck and enable the self-destructive behavior of a mentally unstable individual.
Some of my fellow Atlantans were, and to prove it–they were willing to shell out more than $80 to see the show at the Fox.
Sheen is a complete disaster–unable to comprehend the damage he’s doing not just to himself–but to his many children. But he is celebrated, and he continues to get rich by fleecing the gullible.
What do we value as Americans? Do we enjoy watching celebrities preen and gorge themselves on poison because it titillates us– and offers us some perverted respite from our own behavior? Why does Charlie Sheen dominate the news cycle? He’s nothing more than a degenerate drug abusing reprobate. He is a terrible father. He is an abuser of women, and a fair to middling actor. And yet, this is what we celebrate.
Sheen took batting practice with the Georgia Tech Yellowjacket baseball team for three hours yesterday. Why? What has he done to ingratiate himself into our psyches so intimately? In my America, an abuser of women and a deadbeat father would not be welcome with open arms. Yet there he was, offering the young men of Georgia Tech venomous advice and lurid anecdotes.
We live in a country where a man with an ivy- league education, an ivy- league educated wife, and two beautiful young daughters is denigrated. He is assumed to
be callow, aloof, and detached because of his achievements. He is assumed to be some foreign agent because his father happened to be Kenyan, and his name isn’t Bob or John. A man who by all accounts, is a devoted husband and father– yet is vilified and persecuted as some duplicitious agent of socialism.
Perhaps Barack Obama should develop a nasty drug habit, slap Michelle around a few times, and babble incoherently and incessantly. He may garner more respect from some in society. After all, that is what we seem to value.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Facebook
LinkedIn
Blip.fm
Pinterest
Write well, support you to move on and look forward to your next article.
This makes us realize and think about on how we do value things. As audience, I guess, we have to review what our priorities are.
Good article! I’m not a big fan of Obama, but it is interesting to read another view point. I guess I would be upset to be in his shoes and get stereostyped.