WHAT'S WRONG WITH US?

I have been watching Fox News in the mornings for several years now. CNN finally wore me out with the way the make the news and although the morning hosts on Fox can be silly sometimes I prefer their honest approach to watching the news. When the tea or coffee is ready and the porridge is made I sit down and catch the headlines and see what’s going on in the world.

I quit watching the news last week. “Why?” you ask. Good question. I’m angry and I’m not going to take it any more. I am so sick and tired of seeing hour after hour of coverage of Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears that if I see one more story about them I might do damage to my TV set and then how could I watch USC beat some SEC team in the BCS Bowl Championship game next January?

Now, let me get serious. This national infatuation we have with Anna Nicole Smith and the men who claim to have gotten her pregnant out of wedlock disgusts me. This morning, before I could change the channel, I saw a crowd of people across from the morgue waiting to see the hearse carrying her body drive away. There were families waiting. People with cameras. What’s going on? Will those children someday tell their grandchildren they saw Anna Nicole’s hearse drive away? Is some proud photographer going to flash his prints at the local pub and point and say, “There! That’s the hearse with her body!” Anna Nicole Smith got famous because she took her clothes off for Playboy. In our society that makes someone a celebrity! What is wrong with us?

Britney Spears is a spoiled little brat who thinks the world revolves around her and there doesn’t seem to be one person around her to tell her how wrong she is. She makes a joke out of marriage and parenthood. She drinks and drugs herself unconscious. She shaves her head and then in a blind rage attacks a car with an umbrella. And America waits breathlessly to see if she is going to stay in rehab. What is wrong with us?

What is wrong with us? We have young men and women dying every day in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have wounded and broken bodies being sent home every day to parents, wives, sons and daughters and we have the gall to be entertained by information about a dead addict and a living addict who seems to be trying to kill herself? Please don’t ask me where my Christian compassion is. I’m venting here. It’s not Anna and Britney that upset me. It’s our society! It’s us!

We should be ashamed! We should be disgusted! Someone should say something! Maybe I should say something! Certainly I should say something! We better be careful what we are watching on TV and what we are talking about in our coffee shops. It’s not honoring to God to even mention the things they do in secret. America will be called to answer for her entertainments and idolatries and if I (we) do not warn her I (we) will be culpable. Perhaps we will not be able to change a society that is already so damaged but maybe a few people will hear us. Maybe there are people out there who are ready to hear some real Good News for a change. God help us.

Thanks for listening.