I came into work today and noticed the front page article of the Dayton Daily News was about how a guy from Southeast Ohio won on �Survivor�. THIS is the front page story�..not anything about the war in Iraq and how 13 soldiers died yesterday, or about how the guy Bush had tapped to be Director of Homeland Security had been employing an illegal alien to clean his house, or how Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with dioxin, or how 14 people died in the Philippines from a bomb. Nope- the big news around here is the winner of �Survivor�.
This just makes me wonder- what came first: the chicken, or the egg? Are people in this country so illinformed and disinterested because this is the quality of the news they get, or is the quality of the news so trite because people just stopped caring? The Dayton Daily News is the only newspaper most people around here read, IF they even read one. Now, I know the Dayton Daily is not the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post, but they DO have an obligation to report news. And the last time I checked, the fact that some local idiot managed to outwit a handful of other cerebrally challenged glory hounds is NOT news- its entertainment- and shitty entertainment at that. People these days just don�t seem to care- or want to know- what is going on. All they care about is who won on Celebrity Poker or who got booted off of American Idol or how many glasses of blended cockroaches some idiot on Fear Factor managed to drink before she puked. The media is doing an excellent job of turning everyone into sheep. TV execs no longer have to worry about employing writers who come up with intelligent, witty story lines or actually putting in money for production values- all they need to do now is ask a 14 year old boy what would be more cool- seeing someone eat cow testicles or watching a complete tool get to pick between 30 equally retarded females as to who is going to be his next ex-wife. THIS IS NOT ENTERTAIMENT. This is the kind of programming that used to appeal to us when we were in grade school watching �You Can�t Do That on Television�. I guess a lot fewer people than I had given credit for actually graduated past that juvenile mindset. People are turning into voyeurs. We watch people get humiliated on TV in an attempt to make us feel better about ourselves. People on the religious right are correct about something- this country is going down the tubes- but not for the reasons they seem to attribute it to. It has nothing to do with the fact that religion isn�t being taught in schools or because women have control of their bodies. Its because we�ve allowed ourselves to become placated by the most mundane bullshit imaginable- and in the process, we�ve shut off our brains and have elected to have NBC and Fox do our thinking for us. We have become a nation of intellectual dwarves. We�ve stopped caring about reality, and become more interested in watching it on Reality TV.

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