The youth of today: A contrast of what the mass media gives us.
by Mark William Darus
Most people watch television news, be it local, Fox, CNN broadcasts, you get a skewed portrayal of most aspects of humanity and the world we live in. These news elements mostly give us the sensational and usually the worst of what is going on. Having Internet friends across the globe and what they‘ve shared with me, I’ve come to the belief that such things occur more in America than everywhere else.
I’m not completely dense and understand where this comes from. Ratings mean everything here. What good is a reporter that grants us beauty, which by most, equals boring, uneventful events we so quickly toss to the side of the road.
As a society here, we love scandals, outstanding crimes, murders and teen violence. Sure, we have gangs as most countries do, some of which are incredibly organized and ruthless in their endeavors. Yet we in the USA tend to give such things more attention. Why is that? Are we so lacking some adrenalin desire that we feel lifeless with out it? Have we allowed ourselves to give more credence to others pain, anger and sufferings that it has eclipsed all else within us?
It would seem we are utterly caught up in others lives and happenings that we have neglected so very much around us. So held by American Idol, Cops, and the myriad of pawn-shop programs <those p-shop things growing only from America’s desperation to gain coin by casting off things precious to merely maintain life.> We want to hear about the deaths at corner stores, car crash victims where bodies are tossed thru windshields spattering on the pavement and suicide bombings in other lands, not to mention the occasional school massacres and drive by killings. We crave these things as perhaps they make us feel lucky that we weren’t those that perished or those left in the the leaving traces of fallout emotionally obliterating.
Enough already. Let’s go to the area of what the media doesn’t want us to see. This perhaps gives about 50 seconds a week to in local realms and less nationally unless related to sporting events.
The very same school systems that make up the last four school massacres, pipe bombings and other nasty things that make the news, where kids and faculty were wasted because some kid/kids felt bullied or used. Go figure, what is better than eye-witness reports of the injured dead and better yet, the last breathing of the dying. As those shot in the shoulders and legs amble out with blood covered clothing, leaving their schools passing major doorways, don’t reporters descend on them like starving vultures?
Perky breasted blond, tall and slender, running toward the first crimson splattered human to leave the place. She yells to her camera man: “You best be filming this!”
“What did you see?!?!” a tiny red haired reporter asks?
“Did you see them shoot anyone and what was it like?” a male covered with so much hair spray a hurricane could not make his hair move.
“What was it like having pipe bombs shred your classmates to bits????”
It is so easy to get swept into such tragic things that it leaves most of us blinded to all else. Some occasionally think of their children, but I believe that to be a minority here in the USA. That is, unless parents wish to try for huge coin by suing school systems for lack of security and so forth.
Sorry, but I believe most of us are fucking Idiots, discarding the obvious in relation to our children and would be willing to blame anyone else for out lack of being attentive to our children.
Why I would say this is so easy to share?
Sorry, I have found most people to be so sucked into television programming they miss the best points of their kids, nephews and to a lesser extent, grand parents lives that they forget or pass them off as they share things with their friends.
“Oh my god, did you hear about School X’s killings?”
“Okay, hon, my kid got lead trumpet in marching band, but did you hear about Chardon?”
“Babe, of course Jeremy took a solo. We knew this… Damn, did you hear about Columbine? It’s all over the news, darling.”
And the people ramble on…
When do any of us get a glimpse of the B-side?
How often do we hear something positive?
Once in Blue Moon do we hear about someone that made a great difference with humanity.
Bernard Goetz stood up and beat abuse. The media hyped this to no end. Set your way-back machines people and remember this from 1984.
Going further to areas I should not have gone, I am sorry.
Our United States school systems so easily forget music and the arts for lack of dollars as want more cash for sports teams as those events flourish. Come on people, tell me how this country isn’t acting like a herd of cows heading for a cultural slaughter we so richly have earned? Football team: 30 to 50 kids, basketball team: 20-30, baseball team, 20-40. School bands, orchestras and choirs, several hundred per school and suffering from continual cutbacks. All we like is aggression. This, physically speaking, and how we express ourselves, via the mass media, love the pounding and crushing of others to win no matter what.
Last night I was proud to be in audience of young men singing proudly. This reminded me of how my daughter and her marching band years ago captivated half-time and blasting from the grandstands during many a game.
These young men, stretching vocal chords to their fullest, reaching out proudly to be heard in harmony with their brethren, struck me so very hard. <fine, I shed tears as I remember and write this.> These young men know there is little or no financial future in this, yet they do it all the same. They fully know this is not opera, movies, yet perchance a shot at Broadway though they do not dance.
Seeing their faces as they sang, each expressing areas vastly different than others around them, gave me a view into what they felt as they sang. As one held a note, his face looking sad and forlorn with closed eyes, body slumping, another next to him shined , stood tall, exalted, upward curling lips and eyes wide open. These kids, young men, bobbed about and held all those in audience captive as they shared their vocal souls.
I’ve heard things like the below statements and questions over the years…
Call me a fucking lunatic, but I’d rather hear harmonic vocals and marching bands as opposed to human demolition derby’s to gain mere feet while many a child end up in a hospital.
Why should we fund a marching band five times to size of the football team? Would there be a reason for a marching band without a football game?
To this I would say: Did you ever really watch one? Did you see them march as they played? I have. I am sorry to say you‘re a moron. These kids and their enthusiasm, the belief of their directors hard workings toward them, make them a massive whole far greater than a football team. These marching bands hold a unity thru diligence and a reason to share their talent with one another as they give us. Besides this, who really pumps up a crowd like a drum corps or the blasting of a horn section?
Choirs? You can’t be serious? For god’s sake, what can they do for schools?
<<<I eventually asked this highly anorexic looking female in loose fitting royal blue dress, bra less nipples far too inappropriate for a high school shindig. She was covered in serious gold and diamonds when she expressed herself.>>> “ Why are you here then? Some obligation to sister or brother?” I am what I am, and further probed her head. “Is it the cost of the dry cleaning of their uniforms that upsets you? Y’know, they either own or rent their instruments. What hurts you so? <at this point I usually give a strong glance at their mate as I ask, “Did you have a rough childhood?” Yeah, sure fine, I’m a prick…
Did you ever watch kids play instruments and play before a crowd of strangers?
Did you take a tiny space of your life and listen to our future as children sing to us, give themselves freely to us?
Sure, they’d like a compliment, an atta-boy, perhaps a smile from us. They normally get this as some of us share with our kids.
I find it so damn sad these events, concerts, State Fairs and National Pride endeavors make little or no impression on my Country. They so seldom ever gain any mass media attention whatsoever. It is as if the media in the United States tell us this: If it doesn’t feed fear, a quest to lock yourselves further indoors or create the desire for the wanting of a better alarm system, you just don’t meet the Jones. They have theirs, why don’t you?
“Forgive this interruption of your normal broadcasting! We’re cutting live to Joanie Manshedsiton for a live report!”
Slightly shaking camera, albeit poorly focusing, thus displaying an urgency for this, focusing on reporter Samanthia Horde and the madness amok behind her. Children and adults running madly about, crying, violently shaking, gasping for air.
“are we live?” Joinie firmly states.
The Desert Storm camera man’s head nods up and down.
“This is Samnthia Horde, reporting to you live at the stabbing here at Beachwoodsmont Mall. There are people running behind me! I hear screaming and shouting! There are people rushing around me to get away!”
Camera pans from right to left.
A lone teenage female is focused on.
She takes the barrel of the gun into her mouth and pulls the trigger and blasts her skull to the ceiling.
While this one person went berserk and made headlines, how many good, amazing children were disregarded?
How many hours would blanket us with speculation as to why this kid went bonkers?
Think about the avenues your own life traverses. What is important to you in relation to how much emphasis you place on childhood sports which breed violence in one form or another?
There are more children in the United States of America interested in music and art than there are with sports. These brave kids, so willing to put up with the snide remarks and outright ridicule, by the jocks and cheerleaders, their peers, believe in their dream. They spend hours every day honing their ability to, perhaps, say: “HERE I AM!”
Are they not worthy of our support and praise? Our financing???
Fine, they didn’t win ‘THE BIG GAME.’
Shit, the lackey drum player failed nailing a ‘three-pointer,’ as she bobbed about and felt music fill her, pounding out, never missing a beat with her clan.
Across a street, some freshman team loses. There are hundreds of people in the stands and more on the grounds surrounding the playing field. There are women and men alike shouting, screaming, and even crying. “OH MY FUCKING GOD! HOW DID THEY LOSE?”
I’m on the other side of the road. I am serene and one with the non-violent aspect of humanity.
In the United States of America, we so hold high sports teams. Be it Pro, college or high school, we fuel them, buy their jerseys and give them much coin.
Like 4-Star General George S Patton said: “Americans love a winner! Americans can’t stand a loser. The thought of losing it truly painful to Americans. We have never lost a war and never will!” <<<this is an ironic statement for Patton to say as his grandfather fought for the South during the American civil war. They surely lost that war…>>>>>
We also keenly support reality TV programs. Tell me, please: when does Stephan Kings <aka Richard Bachman> Long Walk or Running Man stories hit us as someday? I have little doubt we will watch someone have their head blown to bits by a 50 caliber when they stagger from the pack as the desperate numbers dwindle for the sake of financial freedom. In bars, households and handhelds will elated jump about as we watch this. I believe this to happen in the next five to maybe ten years if not sooner. Sure, we’ll justify its beginning broadcasts using those on death row as the first subjects. Cannon fodder to us. They would’ve died anyway, right? Doesn’t this cost us less in the long run? Kill the sinners…
As America sits back, praises sports teams, reality programs degrading themselves for a hope of cash and >>>and this hurts me to say this<<, the History Channels filling air time with such epic programming as Pawn Stars or the like, how are we not being pacified?
I wish I could say I am sorry to say this: If I we’re granted asylum in another country, citizenship, I’d take it in a heartbeat.
The children I saw Thursday night were amazing. Their music awesome.
This country I live gives good children nothing. Our government chucks them unless they need food, <WIC program> .
How sad is that? Aren’t we the richest Country on the damn planet? Aren’t we told this repeatedly? What good is that as our kids get cut left and right in schools? What good is being the richest country mean when our children going to college take, on average, over one hundred thousand dollars debt for a further education? I hope they studied a popular foreign language. They need it as we send more jobs overseas.
Don’t we hold the whole friggin’ world captive with our arsenal of NUKES and autonomous planes that can carry destruction anywhere in a matter of moments?
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How stupid are we as a people?
Didn’t the USSR and communism fall?
Didn’t the Carthaginians collapse?
The Persian empire?
Wake the hell up, America!
Didn’t the Roman Empire fall?
Our ego’s and the propaganda we eagerly eat make us fools.
I saw a choir on Thursday. They sounded great, amazing, enchanting.
Too friggin’ bad kids like this will never make the news and seldom be heard…
Children such as these will go higher, place their hearts and souls forth, and in unison: FLY AS ONE leaving all behind.
May such spirit live on forever.
Mark William Darus 10272012
