HUNG UP

by The Stranger

How does a parent, older brother, sister, relative or friend reply to a child’s innocent question “What does THAT mean? ” when they are driving in a car, or walking along a street somewhere these days and they see a signboard promoting the cable TV show HUNG? At which point is a child or youngster expected to know the meaning of that word? And what are we to make of a culture ramming a word like that down our collective throats?

I was channel-surfing a couple of nights ago, and suddenly there was a promo for the new season of Beverly Hills 90210 and here’s what I caught of it: two female high school students talking about a hot guy on the show. And one of the girls says “He’s huge,” and she has both of her hands indicating a width of ten to twelve inches, and the next line she says to her girlfriend is … “BIG AND MEATY!!” This promo was aired on prime time network TV. Again, what does a parent say to a child who asks “What are they talking about, mommy (or )daddy?

What’s happening to us as a country, a culture? One of the things that’s happening is that we are becoming ever more crass, vulgar and cheap by the second. I never imagined I’d be living in a time when things that were once considered too cheap, coarse and in bad taste to be even expressed in mixed company would be exposing themselves to me in my living room during prime time, or there in front of me on signboards as I simply move about the city I live in.

Television is reducing us all collectively to our lowest common denominators. Brainwashing degeneration into us. Think I’m kidding? I’m not. Television is the anti - Christ today. And its addicts walk around like zombies glued to the TV screens that have been reduced to bite size components they carry around in their hands twenty-four hours a day.

When’s the last time you’ve seen a person under the age of thirty-five NOT walking around or driving or doing almost ANYTHING at all when they weren’t glued to a screen in their hand? And the level of addiction appears to grow exponentially with the image these zombies have of themselves as someone attractive, desirable, or upwardly mobile.

Whether or not they actually are any of those things is beside the point - it’s the image they have of themselves that they are, may be, or wannabe perceived that way that glues them to the cell phones in their mitts. To them, using the latest technological gadgets, or to be seen using them are so many proclamations of honor proclaiming “See how hot, how in demand, how connected I am!” But the real question is: CONNECTED TO WHAT??

(Pictyre by http://www.flickr.com/photos/30894058@N03/2934189914/)

The answer to that one is simply how lost and addicted these zombies appear to be to everything that lies outside themselves. How dislocated they appear to be to the well-springs of their own existence - THEIR OWN BEING.

So, Michael Jackson died of an over-dose of drugs. The doctor who gave him the shot that killed him will be made out as the villain. But the doctor who gave him that shot was simply some schmuck who was willing to go just one step farther than the next guy - to make a buck. Michael Jackson put him on his payroll simply because the doc could be persuaded to give the king of pop what he wanted whenever he wanted it. End of story.

Michael Jackson is simply the latest example, as were Elvis and Marilyn Monroe - of the spiritual vacuity that is …. AMERICA - the crassness, vulgarity, and most of all the GREED that has been and is today the life-blood of the land of the free.

A greed that is anything but free. A greed that is costing us as a country, a culture, a land - the innocence of our youth, a constant and unremitting decline in the human values of decency, kindness and good taste that has resulted in a spiritual impoverishment deteriorating everything that once made us - America The Great.

Michael Jackson got everything out of life that he, like our culture at large, lusts after the most. Finally, just before his 51st birthday, Michael Jackson, after years of gorging himself on those values, found himself still alive, if one whose life consists of hiding from life can actually be called to be among the living - simply took matters into his own hands and decided to end it all himself, by having himself shot up with a drug that would end his dis-ease, with himself and his life.

I think the thing that people feel most regarding the death of the so-called and self-proclaimed king of pop - is sadness, not for him per se, but for - ourselves - because it puts us all, on some level, in touch with how separated we‘ve become, as a nation, from all that is real, true - and quite simply, all that is missing in the fabric of how we live our lives in 2009.

Yah, Michael Jackson got everything he ever wanted, all right, except unconditional acceptance from anyone he really cared for, or a genuine intimacy with anyone NOT on his payroll, or even someone who might have offered him real friendship, not for being the king of pop, but for being simply a human being who hungered all his life for the one thing he never received from anyone on a personal, intimate level - unconditional LOVE.