The Paradigm of Prestigious Parasites

It is amazing how successful the media is at shaping our perceptions. If you live here in America, you know that the media and Hollywood do NOT mirror our true soul. Yet if you live in Europe or Asia, your perception of America is the one that Hollywood and the media give you. The perception is misleading because Hollywood is so out of touch with reality, and the media is on a mission. Let’s take them one by one, and lay it out there.

Movies and TV have been America’s source of entertainment for decades. When we were young, it was great to get lost in the fantasies. We could “get away” for a little while and journey into a different world, envisioning ourselves in the lead roles; being heroes, warriors, or just simply wishing our family was the Huxtables. Then some young dreamers ventured to make this their world, their career; moving off to New York or Hollywood to take classes, wait tables, and make it to every audition possible.

When they “made it” they were soon swamped with media types sticking microphones in their faces every chance possible. Fascinated with the people behind the character, many of us sat on our couches wondering how they made it, what made them different. We identified with their characters, admired their craft, and found them interesting. Somewhere along the way, these actors and moviemakers started to think that this elevated them into a position of authority. They forgot that our obsession was about them being entertainers, not professional analysts of our political system. Soon, the idea of making movies stopped being about entertaining us, and they somehow began to think it was their job to educate us. They had some moral “mandate” to shape our society and correct our “sins” and “failings” as a society. I am not sure when Hollywood started thinking that their role became that of a pulpit for ideology and propaganda, but as time goes on, they are quickly losing their luster. Now the Hollywood elites sit dumbfounded at the backlash they see in the box office and the voting booths. The lack of success of the movie “Alexander” has become some kind of slam on America being “homophobic!” They marketed this movie as an action filled film about a great warrior and his conquest, and when people showed up to watch, they found big screen pictures of men lusting after other men.

What is so hard for Hollywood to figure out here? We don’t want a 3-hour lecture done with pictures. The message is “shame, shame. You hold this guy Alexander up as some great warrior; did you know he was gay? See how hypocritical you are? You silly people know nothing about real history and just want to keep the parts you like while you throw out the rest of the facts.” Since when do we want visual images of this? I don’t hate butchers, but I sure don’t want to watch visuals of their work. So why, if I am not interested on watching men check each other out, does that make me “homophobic” and hateful or intolerant? Wake up Hollywood. We don’t go to the movies for a lesson or lecture; we go to the movies to get lost in a story that will ultimately make us feel good. It is called ENTERTAINMENT!!!!!

Part two of this is the media. As I mentioned, they are on a mission. They are filled with the hunger to bring us the truth! The problem is that these folks spend so much time chasing after Hollywood and Washington with a microphone, that they are not spending a lot of time in the same world as their audience, so their “truth” is our idea of what happens when someone has too much time and too much money (not too mention they need a muzzle). The most successful reporters are surrounded by interns and “yes” men. They are lost in the perception of self-importance. It is their duty to find truth and bang us over the head with it. The premise of this whole idea is that THEY know better than we do. They are “enlightened.” I guess what makes them so enlightened is that they wear better clothes, dine in better restaurants, and live in bigger houses. Or maybe it is because they have spent so many hours engulfed on conversation on world politics and philosophies while guzzling too many martinis (which is perfectly safe for them since if the limo driver has the night off, their fame and money can certainly fix any problems caused on the way home). I think what really makes them get lost in self-importance is they forgot that Hollywood is using them to get exposure, thus inviting them to their parties; and the media is using Hollywood to get high ratings. So here we have these two groups prostituting themselves to each other, and the rest of us are trying to tune in for entertainment and knowledge on current events. Somehow, the news has become and extension of a Hollywood party conversion by immoral drunks with too much money and no accountability, backed up with pieces of “factual information” ever so twisted to prove their paradigm as reality.

The rest of America is slowly starting to resent the condescending messages. We are tired of being put into little boxes of haters, illiterates, and gun toting morons with a lust for war and destruction. All we want is for them to get back to the role in our lives that put them in our good graces. We created this monster with our willingness to put them on a pedestal, and now we are reaping that creation.

Just food for thought, I heard Glenn Beck put this into perspective very well. We are ALL allotted the same amount of time. No one gets more, or less, than 24 hours in each day. What if we started dictating to the elites, how they should spend their time. What if we told them how important community service was, and if they didn’t agree, they were self-centered. Then WE would decide where they would be spending their time in community service. What if they didn’t get to choose the cause they donated their time to, and WE decided for them. As they seek to tell us how we should think, and how the government knows where our money should be spent better than we do; maybe they would understand how insulting it was if we told them how they needed to spend their time in order to prove that they weren’t just paying lip service to the notion of contributing to the betterment of man-kind. I wonder if they would start to resent us for overstepping our bounds from adoring fans to moral judges. Hey Babs, hey Dan, I know of a single mother that doesn’t want a hand-out or your money, but she sure could use someone to help with meals, laundry, dishes, and caring for the kids while she works to provide them a home! On second thought, I don’t think I want you spending time with my children, on screen, or off.