by: Jenni Vinson
June 15, 2001
Before the 1950’s we were Americans, but that all changed when the 1960’s social environment insisted that the nation’s citizens needed to learn be a different type of American. Americans were asked to stop being patriotic and to question all authority. It was supposed that the nation had become too naive in assuming that our elected officials were conducting the nations business in a manner which upheld the best interest of it’s citizen’s. Getting us into Viet Nam seemed to be contrary to our nation’s best interest. The amount of casualties alarmed Americans, especially the youth, who were being asked to fight a war they did not understand and in which there was a high probability that they would die. And so began the second American Revolution.
Still, not everything was bad about the 1960’s mentality. The idea was that America would be converted into one massive commune where everyone was responsible for his “brother” and wealth and materials would be shared and shared alike. Under this philosophy, albeit communist, none of the country’s citizens were supposed to lack basic needs.
But many of those who wore the rose-colored glasses in the 1960s did not exactly hold to those lovely thoughts for very long. Somewhere on their way to the need for a methodone treatment, the dream for such an America was cast aside. Maybe it was because of the permeation of drugs and other such factors but somehow the revolution veered off course. It was no longer “we” that was important, but “me”. What may have begun as something that had a semblance of nobility has turned in to something quite ugly.
During the formation of the “me” era, television paraded before America- people who enjoyed celebrity by virtue of being able to come into our livingrooms via television. Somewhere during this period, the American dream was altered to include life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the opportunity to someday appear on television.
Sociologists have written dozens of books attempting to explain America’s need to air out their private lives in public forums. First we had Art Linkletter and his “Kids Say The Darndest Things” where we saw real people on television with their stories which were of course, cute and meant to make us laugh.
Then we had Queen For a Day, This Is Your Life and eventually, Candid Camera. All these shows displayed real people who were willing to place themselves in less than flattering situations for the sake of being on television.
Those shows lead to the development of Phil Donahue, where women tuned in to learn how to be Feminist from a man. Phil Donahue was the first man who able to “touch his feminine side”. That show began the trend of soul bearing for the camera which paved the way for the gang of Talk Show leaders we have now.
Today’s Talk Show hosts are relentless in getting people to come on their shows to disclose some of the most intimate and sometimes bizarre personal behavior. These are regular people who have real problems who decide to expose their problems to the entire country.
America has always always been drawn to Soap Operas. I myself, rarely took a class at 1:00pm during my undergraduate studies because of an addiction to Guiding Light. (I have not watched it in over a decade-- but I can still tune in for a few minutes and be caught up. Reba has not married everyone so they still have a story line.) Anyway- it is as though America decided that individually, their lives were just as twisted and complex and just as worthy of airing as any episode of As The Wolrd Turns. So, we set out to lay our stories before the cameras and the world.
It may be seem funny and it may be entertaining, but it does not confine itself to simply being about strange people who put themselves on these Talk Shows, because what I assess is that our court system has been subjected to this same mentality. Everyone has a story to tell and the Judge will do if Oprah is not available.
Now it is about more than simply wanting the proverbial fifteen minutes of fame. It is about demanding a forum to prove that one has been wronged. The airing of the wrong seems to be more important than the correction, compensation or even the apology for it. It is not about seeking justice, it is only about proving the injustice.
Airing our dirty laundry is no longer a shameful matter, it is now socially acceptable and socially EXPECTED behavior. If someone does something to harm you in whatever manner and to whatever degree, you are seen as foolish and/or weak if you do not defend yourself publically. What we have seen is that people will use a public forum as the method of achieving the ultimate revenge in humiliating a person, an employer or even an institution who has committed a wrong.
Several industries have been built to bolster America’s need to do these public show-n-tell-alls. The Talk Shows are a definite side affect of this with Jerry Springer being the most bizzare of them all. On that show the underbelly of America parade themselves and the objective is to provide the most shock factor.
We have more lawyers in our country than any other country on the planet. We can gripe and joke about the way they behave but they only do what we ask of them and they are generally really intelligent people, so they get inventive with our requests. They know we want them to win and they simply use all methods and application of the law available to them to achieve that.
Then we have the Court TV shows and there are more and more of these springing up everyday. We want to educate ourselves and be ready for our day in court so we watch lots of that now. Someone will wrong us, so we will need to be ready.
Americans do not have a problem with suing neighbors or friends anymore. Some Americans have sued their parents for material gain. We are pretty much in an “everything goes” zone right now.
The problem with this type of adversarial mentality is that one party will always be a winner and the other will have to be the loser. If we have an entire country of people who freely utilize the court system for the carriage of personal vendettas, we will cripple the court system and will not have enough resources available for attaining real justice for anyone. And we splinter our society into an infinite number of sectors with ill feelings always running as an undercurrent among us.
We perceive that we have RACE relations problems, but I assure you, the races are not getting along amongst themselves either. It is very possible, in America that a person would be told that they are no longer, Black, Hispanic or even woman; that they have lost that status, because they are on the wrong side of an adversarial situation. For example, Anita Hill, by virtue of being a Feminist IS a woman and was protected and defended by the National Organization of Women when she brought charges against Clarence Thomas for sexual harrassment, even though she had no substanciated proof, but Paula Jones, who’s case was stronger against Bill Clinton was reduced to being called “trailor park trash” because she was on the wrong side of an issue.
I discussed this article with my son, Oscar, and he interjected that our society spends so much time trying to keep a separation between Church and State that we have failed to notice that “ we have gone from living in a society ruled by a Democracy (government run for the people and by the people) to a Theocracy (government run by a religion) with the religion being the worship of the SELF. Even though we worry and many argue that a Theocracy would be the end of America, we are already living with the worst possible form of it where the religion insists that no one counts except for the individual. Nihilistic (those who believe that nothing is ever really right or wrong) self-worshippers do not make good citizens”.
America is a huge ship to manuever and she has wandered into some choppy waters and changing her course is a slow tedious task. We have been sailing in the Me Era for over 40 years now with no end to this journey in sight. We will have to begin to get tired of always being at odds with each other for things to change. And we will have to come to see that the whole idea of airing out dirty laundry publicly simply invites a whole lot of people to involve themselves in our problems. That always makes things worse. You just end up muddled with too much diverse advice. Too many spoons in the soup spoil the soup.