This came as an e-mail to me from my Dad and step-Mom. I think it makes a whole lot of sense and explains why I can’t stand the MSM. Enjoy!
-Spoiled Brats -
The other day I was reading Newsweek magazine and came across some poll data I found rather hard to believe. It must be true given the source, right?
The Newsweek poll alleges that 67% of Americans are unhappy with the direction the country is headed and 69% of the country is unhappy with the performance of the president. In essence 2/3 of the citizenry just ain’t happy and want a change.
So being the knuckle dragger I am, I started thinking, ”What are we so unhappy about?”
Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?
Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter? Could it be that 95.4% of these unhappy folks have a job?
Maybe it is the ability to walk into a grocery store at any time and see more food in moments than Darfur has seen in the last year?
Maybe it is the ability to drive from the Pacific ocean to the Atlantic ocean without having to present identification papers as we move through each state?
Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe motels we would find along the way that can provide temporary shelter?
I guess having thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine from around the world is just not good enough.
Or could it be that when we wreck our car, emergency workers show up and provide services to help all and even send a helicopter to take you to the hospital if needed.
Perhaps you are one of the 70% of Americans who own a home. You may be upset with knowing that in the unfortunate case of a fire, a group of trained firefighters will appear in moments and use top notch equipment to extinguish the flames thus saving you, your family and your belongings.
Or if, while at home watching one of your many TVs, a burglar or prowler intrudes, you can shoot him with your own gun, or if there’s time an officer equipped with a gun and a
bullet-proof vest will come to defend you and your family against attack or loss.
This all in the backdrop of a neighborhood free of bombs or militias raping and pillaging the residents.
Neighborhoods where 90% of teenagers own cell phones and computers.
How about the complete religious, social and political freedoms we enjoy that are the envy of everyone in the world? Maybe that is what has 67% of the folks unhappy.
Fact is, we are the largest group of ungrateful, spoiled brats the world has ever seen. No wonder the world loves the U.S. Yet has a great disdain for its citizens. They see us for what we are. The most blessed people in the world who do nothing but complain about what we don’t have and what we hate about the country instead of thanking the good Lord we live here.
I know, I know. What about the president who took us into war and has no plan to get us out? The president who has a measly approval rating?
Is this the same president who guided the nation in the dark days after 9/11?
The president that cut taxes to bring an economy out of recession? Could this be the same guy who has been called every name in the book for succeeding in keeping all the spoiled ungrateful brats safe from terrorist attacks?
The commander in chief of an all-volunteer army that is out there defending you and me?
Did you hear how bad the President is on the news or talk show? Did this news affect you so much, make you so unhappy you couldn’t take a look around for yourself and see all the good things and be glad?
Think about it……are you upset at the President because he actually caused you personal pain OR is it because the “Media” told you he was failing to kiss your sorry ungrateful behind every day.
Make no mistake about it. The troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have volunteered to serve, and in many cases may have died for your freedom. There is currently no draft in this country. They didn’t have to go.They are able to refuse to go and end up with either a ”general” discharge, an ”other than honorable” discharge or, worst case scenario, a ”dishonorable” discharge after a few days in the brig.
So why then the flat-out discontentment in the minds of 69% of Americans?
Say what you want but I blame it on the media. If it bleeds, it leads, and they specialize in bad news.
Everybody will watch a car crash with blood and guts. How many will watch kids selling lemonade at the corner?
The media knows this and media outlets are for-profit corporations. They offer what sells, and when criticized, try to defend their actions by “justifying” themselves in one way or another.
Just ask why they tried to allow a murderer like O.J. Simpson to write a book about how he didn’t kill his wife, but if he did he would have done it this way…… Insane!
Stop buying the negativism you are fed everyday by the media.
Shut off the TV, burn Newsweek and use the New York Times for the bottom of your bird cage Then start being grateful for all we have as a country.
There is exponentially more good than bad.
Now tell all the spoiled brats to stop the whining!
I put that up in a post awhile ago – and I got a comment from a rather angry person. Must have hit a nerve! LOL
I haven’t been blog reading as much as I would like, so I missed it at your place Yankeemom! If someone gets ticked off with me…oh, well.
Damn!!! I just ran out of Famous Amos cookies. Now I’m really unhappy. Life is so difficult here in America. Damn!!
My microwave broke down and is infested with cockroaches. I think I’ll suicide. Fall on my knife as it is.
[...] A Rose By Any Other Name, Anna reminds us of all the things for which we should be thankful — and, sadly, how ungrateful we [...]
Such extremes, Ymarsakar! My daughter does that…”OMG, I was SOOOOO scared!”
Thanks for the linkage, Book! It’s a great little piece, isn’t it?! I love the stuff my Dad sends me!
One of the most enjoyable things I’ve done in the past couple of months was to turn my TV into a Home Entertainment Center. Now I “watch” Classical Music while reading. Except when baseball is on.
Very good idea, Stew! I watch reruns of ER and Law&Order or home improvement shows. OK, so I still watch Glenn Beck, but I like the way he thinks!
Anna, I agree with most of this, but I worked for many years at a middling-sized regional newspaper where we were forbidden to even take our cameras out of our cars at the scene of a car wreck, because the publisher and managing editor didn’t want people to even worry that we might run pictures and thus cause more pain than was already out there. We had an unwritten policy of trying to get a picture of every kid in the circulation area into the paper in a favorable or neutral way before they got out of high school. We ran a lot of ‘lemonade stand’ type pictures (also tons of group shots). Our circulation numbers were astounding given the demographics and our ads so thick we had battles between the news people and ad people for space. We also handled the hard news and controversies, don’t get me wrong. We weren’t Pollyannas or ostriches. But we didn’t create controversies and we treated people in painful situations with respect.
When there was a change in management and we got some editors who changed the paper’s direction by ‘punching up’ stories and trying to stir things up to get some action, who had space for kids who misbehaved but didn’t have as much space for good kids, and who used bad news in a more callous way, a lot of readers, advertisers and staff (including me) bailed out, which didn’t seem to matter to the new editors because, as far as I could see, they wanted to out-Watergate Watergate, and change the world, and make things happen, and, at a guess, go to bed knowing they had made ‘hard choices’ and taught people a thing or two about how awful the world really was in its present condition. We’d gone from a newspaper that was trying to be useful and informative as well as a community builder, to one run by people who wanted to – perhaps needed to – feel important and be movers and shakers.
Money wasn’t the deciding factor. Faced with losing money, a lot of people in the news business hang on, like martyrs. Like Hollywood, which can see lines form around the block for movies that are friendly to traditional values and still turn out movies that aim to tear traditional values to shreds, I think it’s more of a mindset. Maybe a mission, at least in their minds.
Sorry this is so long, but that so many newspapers are losing their shirts but not changing their stripes I think means something.
You are so right, Kathryn. We have our local paper who will print the stories, but does not sensationalize. Our bigger city paper was getting pretty bad, but was bought out by, believe it or not, a Canadian company and the stories are much less biased and in your face. Not all papers are the NY Times (thank goodness), but you’re right, you’d think they’d learn as they watch their readership dwindle that it isn’t about who can be the most controversial.
This is so true-we are not perfect, but I would not want to be anyplace else.
I wouldn’t want to be anyplace else either, Mindy. No one is perfect and as humans, we cannot expect our government (run by humans) to be perfect either. That is a simple fact that so often gets overlooked in the quest to blame someone for our country’s or even the world’s ills.
The only unhappiness I experience is seeing/hearing/reading all the stupidity of our elected officials who seem to think they have all the answers. Even though most of those answers are a form of societal suicide, by golly, they love to get up and spout off with them!
My life is what I’ve made of it, for good and bad, and if I am unhappy then it is up to me to get off my lazy butt and do something about it. It ain’t nobody else’s responsibility.
Amen, Benning and that’s exactly the point for both this post and the “higher education” post. Rely on yourself first. Don’t expect others to make you happy, rich, take the blame or anything else. Personal responsibility…guess DC and the MSM just don’t know what that phrase means!