Land of the Free, Home of the Naive

I'm having a sick-of-it-all moment. Friends, I've tried my best to stay positive. But America sucks. I'm not even really going to talk about our idiot president and his evil vice-squad Dick/Rove. (I'll only retell a story from this months Rolling Stone. Kurt Vonnegut, author, tells his interviewer that he's going to sue Pall Mall cigarettes. Ya wanna know why? Lung cancer, the interviewer asks. NO, because I'm 83 years old. Those bastards lied to me. They told me I'd be dead by 40, but instead I now have to suffer through leaders named Dick and Bush and, until recently, Colon.)

What I'm sick of is how our media treats teenagers. As a rookie youth pastor, I'm coming to enjoy teens as deep, smart, complex little adults coming into their own identity. The media sees teens as shallow little pods to manipulate into buying crap they don't need and is dedicating itself to turning teenagers into consumerist robot adults.

This weekend I witnessed three things that have brought this epidemic to my attention.

First, Sunday night was the Teen Choice Awards on Fox. Dane Cook was hosting with Jessica Simpson. If you aren't familiar, go to youtube and watch Dane Cook. Needless to say, noone under the age of 18 should know who Dane Cook is, but their he was, telling the teens what to like. "Roll Model" Britney Spears, who's pretty much turned herself into the richest white-trash barefoot and pregnant, stand by my man, walk into public restroom without shoes, drive with my baby in my lap kuntry girl in the world. Britney's explanation of why driving with a baby on her lap is ok, "We're country". And, if you needed anymore prove that TV stations and record companies are ruining our teenagers lives, the show concluded with the first ever performance of Britney's equally trashy and undeserving hubbie Kevin Federline, or K-Fed, as I call him. Kids who think Pink Floyd is an energy drink and The Beatles were the precursor for the Wiggles are being forced, FORCED, into thinking that Federline actually has any sort of musical talent and really deserves to be performing for us all, not merely because his sugar-momma bought and paid for his entire career, but that he's breaking new ground in the COMPLETELY over white-guy trying to get into black music. You're no Elvis, you're not Eminem, you're not even Vanilla Ice. But, because of his wife, our teenagers are being told to like this immature, idiotic, talentless piece of garbage.

Number two, this week in Entertainment Weekly there's an article about the MTV "reality" show Laguna Beach. Laguna Beach is a horrorfyingly watchable show about horrofylingly spoiled rich kids from California. The channel that just celebrated 25 years of MUSIC TELEVISION, and hasn't played a music video in about 10 oof those, is watched by every kid in America 13-20. These shockingly shallow kids who have no idea what need is, what real problems are or how much they actually have, are being painted by the writers (that's right, the reality show has writers) as people the teens of America should aspire to be like. And because they're well-trained little commercialist robots, they listen.

Number three, getting a hair cut yesterday, the only thing to read was Seventeen. This is a horrible magazine. Not only is it not well-written or designed or edited, but the content itself is disturbing. One such magazine, "How to Make Him your Boyfriend", discusses the need for young women to define themselves based on the idiot jock on her arm. The other, "How to Get Over Him", says that all men are trash, and the best way to feel great after your boyfriend cheats on you is to go out with his best friend. No lie. No articles about finding yourself, defining who you are as a young woman, being comfortable alone. It's boyfriends and fashions. In one magazine, the front of the magazine has vomit-inducing pictures of Nicole Ritchie (another person who has done absolutely nothing but be born to be famous) and talk about the dangers of anorexia. Later, in the SAME MAGAZINE, there's a story about how to get Ritchie's style, which to me looks like "Hobo-chic".

I'm sick of it all. I put the blame 50% on the industry and 50% on the parents. The kids who shouldn't know who Dane Cook is but do, aren't getting the parental supervision that they should be getting. The kids who come to me at church to talk about the new System of a Down album or bloody video game (both of which, at 24, I buy with frequency) need parents who don't just send their 13 yr old to the mall with money but who take an active interest in what their child is doing.

America. Land of the ignorant. Home of the Consumer. Land of the ethnocentrist. Home of egomaniacs. Land of the shallow, the inept, the celebrity. And home of the free-blogger, able to type his mind. Love it or hate it, it's home.

B