Why Do We Care What These People Say?

We've apparently found the latest threat to American society: a sixty-something, bearded man who lives in a Louisiana swamp and who makes duck calls for a living.  He replaces the previous greatest threat: a reporter who once interviewed Michael Jackson about sleeping with little kids.  And of course, hat reporter replaced the old lady who makes food loaded with butter and lard as the person most likely to ruin this country with his or her personal beliefs and comments.

I have grown tired of the faux "outrage" that follows public comments from less-than-stellar examples of Americans as a whole.  Phil Robertson was a backwoods huckster until his marketing-savvy son realized that this "redneck" image could be amped up and sold to the general public through a "reality" TV show.  All those guys didn't always have those beards, you know.  Now for millions, he has somehow become a bastion of all that is "good and holy"--and should be above reproach for whatever his beliefs are on gays and blacks.

Martin Brashir got himself canned by MSNBC by insinuating that someone should "sh$t in Sarah Palin's mouth" after her comparison of high taxes to slavery.  Brashir was a nobody in American journalism until Michael Jackson agreed to allow him to do what had been sold to him as a "behind-the-scenes look at how he makes his music"--but was instead edited by Brashir to show MJ as this deranged middle-aged man obsessed with boys in a sexual manner.  He's not even an American citizen--yet his opinions on Sarah Palin are treated like blasphemy.

And Paula Deen's only discernible talents are baking and eating.  Yet her use of a word so common in Hip-Hop vernacular that it outnumbers "the" results in millions of dollars of products being pulled from store shelves across the country--and the cancellation of about half the programming on a TV network.

So here we get worked up by comments from people like this--while economists at the Congressional Budget Office keep telling us that Social Security will become insolvent by the year 2031 and we just shrug our shoulders and go back to TMZ.com.  Or when those same economists point out that the federal deficit will equal the entire output of the nation by 2038 and we respond with the blank stares of children who have just been asked to define Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

Hey folks, how about we start listening to what actual, important people have to say for awhile--and worry about what the clowns are thinking a little bit later.