The media obsession with downward-spiraling celebrities is even more off-kilter than the unfortunates they breathlessly follow and mock.
Charlie Sheen is wrong when he says only 5% of those in AA recover. AA doesn’t keep statistics and has no membership rosters. So, the truth is, no one knows what AA’s success rate is. However, there are millions of folks who went to AA, got clean and sober, and have stayed that way. Others do it through religion. Some just do it on their own. What Sheen misses is the crucial point that if he wishes not to self-destruct then he must put down the drugs and alcohol for keeps. As for all his bravado, that’s just denial and probable meth psychosis speaking through him.
I’ve been clean and sober a long time. While Sheen’s story is certainly colorful, I know many who can top his tale. He’s not the biggest and the baddest. But he is the most public.
While there’s no way to help an addict who doesn’t want help, the unrelenting focus on him makes things worse. It isn’t even a useful focus. There’s little or no attempt to help (or to say, run sidebar articles telling addicts where to get help.) Instead, it’s endless gawking and snickering, with no attempt to understand it.
Sheen may be on the Highway To Hell. But our popular culture isn’t much better. There’s something decaying about a pop culture that celebrates the decaying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TziyOcb96q0
AC/DC is tongue-in-check about this. Addicts aren’t.
My comments from yester year and a wee poem.
If it was just the sex, scandal and celebrity worship it would be bad enough but the mainstream media is much worse than just a keyhole view of the self-centred celebrity parasites and their fawning poodles. It has a much more sinister purpose, it is a necessary tool of the state/corporate/imperialism military machine and is used with a relentless brutal ruthlessness.
Mainstream media, like harmful bacteria, is everywhere, it is accepted in its present form as if it were the guardian of society. It probably is, the guardian of this corrupt and vicious system we call capitalism. It does this by concealing and safe-guarding the shady and self-serving connections between the media, politics, government, big business, in particular, the military-industrial complex and religious organisations.
To do this the planet and most of its inhabitants, you and me, are ruthlessly lied to, manipulated and exploited, sometimes tortured and killed, for the enrichment and gratification of a few power freaks and parasites. The mainstream media spouts patriotism, dividing the world’s working class, perpetuates such schemes as the states phony “War on terror”, glorifies the present slaughter in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere as some sort of Western sacrifice for the benefit of others and works up fervour against the next sacrificial lamb, in the present case, Iran.
The mainstream media will claim to inform and investigate when in fact all it does is pump out money making distraction or disinformation at best and at worst, cynical war-mongering propaganda. It will lie and distort with impunity, overlook, deny or ” forget” its own dangerous filth but will not hesitate to crucify one of its enemies for the slightest slip-up.
To be informed we need to ignore the mainstream media and create our own media, a working class information system that is not tied to the profit greed machine, not wedded to the corrupt state apparatus. This is easier than ever with desktop publishing and the internet, through these channels we can produce local news handouts as well as keeping ourselves informed on international affairs. We can create links across all borders with our working class brothers and sisters in any part of the world, we can create unity within our class and lay the foundations for a just and peaceful world based on sustainability and mutual aid. Let’s communicate, organise, take back our world and let the revolution flourish.
ENDLESS BABBLE.
The questions arise. Why war and hunger?
Why does poverty continue to linger?
Why such need in a world of wealth?
Why put a price on a child’s health?
Confused and angry the public stand
gazing in disbelief at this pathetic band.
Those shiny politicians designed by spin
their street credibility paper thin,
the great persuaders looking the mood
struggling so hard just for our good!
Masters of the art of wheeling and dealing
exceptional experts at legal stealing.
Enter the Media, drowning us all in trivial text,
everything you need know
of scandal and sport, crime and sex.
Together they create a world of confusion
all fashion and style, a vicious illusion.
So no matter how often we point at need,
we always drown in a sea of greed,
no debate entered into, no answers found,
the waffle the babble goes round and round.
Good points. With the media babbling and distracting about Charlie Sheen then no one is paying much attention to the ongoing plunder by the banksters.
It’s almost as effective as, say, football season. I once suggested to a group of fairly left-leaning progressives that the super Bowl was yet another distraction from what’s really going on – and with only one exception, I was shouted down as being a fringe lunatic. After the game ended, of course.
Bread and circuses. While Rome burns
Ever notice how much ‘the wave’ resembles the response to Hitler’s speeches?
One large spectacle, a handful engaged in it, and the world’s population watching while the parasites gorge themselves at our expense. We’re nearly there, what with the Olympics and other “spectacular” events being lined up for our consumption. Keep the prols distracted but happy.