For many months now, I've considered the news I read and watch on television to be adhering very strictly to the motto: All Bad News, All The Time. Seems like everyone in America can't afford to buy gas, is on the verge of starving and one week away from having their mortgage foreclosed on them. The first 15 seconds of 80% of the stories on our nightly news here in Idaho begin something like this: "With gas prices at an all time high and food prices soaring, blah blah blah bad news."
It aggravates me so much, I have to admit, that I'm consuming less and less news. I've been known to storm out of the room until the news is over, or yell at the TV on rare occasions: "If you'd just quit saying everything's so bad, maybe people wouldn't be so terrified and they'd start spending money again!"
That's probably why I found the words of one of McCain's advisors this week so refreshing. He was quoted as saying we're in a "mental depression" and that America is a "nation of whiners." Forget McCain, I'd like to vote for this guy!
For years I've said, if I were President, that I'd make all teenagers go live in a third-world country for a year before they graduated high school. I've been irritated to the core by the lack of, well, reality in the minds of most teenagers who whine when their parents won't buy them a new $150 pair of jeans every week. So you can imagine how sick to death I am of the whining of my fellow Americans about the cost of rice at the local Wal-Mart when they're still chugging down $5 lattes at a record pace and movie theaters are still churning out popcorn by the boatload.
If the news media can be trusted to the slightest degree, we really are a nation of whiners with no -- absolutely no -- international perspective. Do you realize that if you have a bank account, regardless of the amount that's in there, you're wealthier than 90% of the world? Do you know how many millions, no hundreds of millions, of individuals are living on this planet without the things we consider basic necessities -- clean water, comfortable bed, more than one pair of pants? And we're throwing a national hissy fit because the price of good, clean, healthy milk that we didn't have to put a smidge of effort into producing costs 30% more than last year, that is, if you don't print out a $1 off coupon from your personal computer/printer in the comfort of your own air-conditioned, internet-enabled home before driving to the store, no doubt by yourself or with only your family, in your comfortable running-most-of-the-time automobile on well-maintained roads with street lights and friendly police officers making sure you're safe and an entire medical system on hold to whisk you away and fix you for free if you can't afford it and if your kids are screaming after the milk run you can pull through the drive thru and pick up more clean, pre-prepared food that you did nothing to produce before stopping off at the air-conditioned gym where your kids are entertained while you chug away on the treadmill, sipping from your clean bottle of water while listening to your favorite music on an iPod and reading close captions on a wide variety of television stations blaring about how rotten our standard of living is.
What we need in America is just a little bit of perspective. That's the point I imagine ol' whatshisname was trying to get across, but unfortunately the McCain camp has already thrown him under the bus... I guess I won't get the chance to vote for him after all.
Meanwhile, I ran across a site that made my heart swell today. Three cheers for Fox News and their new campaign: Real American Stories. If you're tired of all the woe-is-us stories, in frequency matched only by America-is-horrible stories in the mainstream media, check out this site and remember for a few minutes why you live in the greatest country in the world.
When I was visiting England a couple years ago I ran across a t-shirt shop in Bath proudly displaying this gem in their window. It reminded me of a comment I'd heard from one of the people involved in making the movie Independence Day -- they said there were so many alien movies coming out because aliens were the only demographic group that didn't have a pack of lawyers ready to sue you for negative stereotyping if you made them the villain.