adventures in disaster

updating

I regularly forget I have this blog thing and because I have to date maybe two readers who never comment it probably isn't such a big deal.
But I wanted someplace to write about how I feel watching the media murder Britney Spears. Don't get me wrong, I believe Ms Spears holds some responsibility for the tragedy her life has become but I think the media holds their share too.
The problem is I can't blame the media entirely. Mass media is a business. Business means money. Everything they do is all about making the most money possible. The media researches the public and the public announces clearly what the want to read or watch.
The public wants blood, despair, tragedy..all things grotesque.
The media obliges and makes billions.

We haven't evolved at all. The Romans murdered for the entertainment of the masses, mobs watched and cheered at public executions for hundreds of years. All we have changed in 2008 is removing the public execution and exchanging it for public humiliation that lasts and lasts and lasts.
I bet the Britney Spears mob wouldn't mind seeing her execution if they could watch in the privacy of their own home.

What does it say about us as a people that we label the life of a seriously mentally ill young woman entertainment?
When did we get so cut off from reality?
I know, it's when "reality television" became so prevalent. We sat and watched real people acting bizarrely for hours and hours soaking it all up, unable , unwilling to see the wizard behind the curtain writing the lines those "real" people were saying.
We have become so willingly duped we watch something real and don't react to it anymore.
We think "oh, it's just entertainment, attention seeking stars..." We are filling in the blanks with our own imaginations always forgetting this is a real person.

Anyone who has read McCarthy's The Road and still has a brain linked to the real world understood immediately that the future he describes fits perfectly with the behaviour we see every day. Just change the scenario around a bit. You have food and the baying mob of paparazzi has none, how much pressure would it take to move them from a mob to murderers?

Britney is food, for the media barons and the public , how close have we come to finishing our meal? Will we just chew off a limb or two leaving her crippled but alive or are we going to finish the job?

Just by simply stopping your consumption you could maybe walk away with a minimum of blood on your hands but you aren't going to are you? You need to see.

posted by adventures in disaster @ 1:10 PM