A Million Dollar Disgrace

NBC just outbid ABC for the rights to the first post-prison interview of Paris Hilton. Besides the network taking a financial hit, the real losers are the rest of us. Sure, millions will tune in to hear the heiress tell her tragic tale of being locked up and blah, blah, blah. Yet, there is no real contribution to society from this interview. The real story is very short, she acted irresponsibly once, twice and kept doing it until the authorities finally had to lock her up for flagrantly disregarding the law.

Our media and subsequently our society is celebrity-obsessed to the point where real issues seemingly do not matter. Imagine if that million dollar payoff to a billionaire was invested in the news department. Network news hardly does the job they did in the past. Much of their news is either infotainment or regurgitated government propaganda. It's truly pathetic. The masses are too busy in their own lives and problems to notice and take much of what is thrown at them on the screens as fact.

When the Roman Empire began to fall, the majority of people were enthralled by games, too engrossed to care about what was beginning to tear their civilization apart. It was easier to watch games (as it is to see Paris Hilton sobbing) than to care and actually do something about the war-hungry Emperors that wasted the treasury on far-flung military conquest than shore up the homeland.

That Empire is long gone, but ours is still near its peak (or slightly past it). However, there is still time to salvage it. We need to wake up from the garbage shoveled at us on billboards and television screens and start to care about issues that truly affect us. Michael Moore stepped up with SiCKO, showing us how the HMOs would rather kill us than reduce their profit margins. Many advocacy groups fight against the degradation of the constitution and many other disgraces of the Bush Administration. The structure is there to fight, we just need more active citizens to fill the ranks and take back our democracy.