Every time I’ve ever written about America I get in big trouble.
I unleash a litany of criticism about Australia, the former PM was a colossal knobcheese and Australians spend too much time watching grown men punch each other for fun. I spew vitriol upon the sort-of-not-really-United Kingdom, a tiny tiny spec of an island where everyone is a just a tiny, little bit racist but far too polite and passive-aggressive to say it out loud. I cast grievous aspersions against my beloved France, home to a people so obsessed with an eternal struggle against ‘the man’ that no French human has actually worked more than four consecutive hours since 1945. I poke fun, I make sweeping, often unfounded statements, I draw nonsensical conclusions and no one ever remarks on anything other than my spelling. But when I write something less than fawning about the Stars or their Stripes, friends of mine get a little bit nasty, they come over all judgy; they take it very fucking personally. #goodthingthentheydontcarryaglock
Those friends might do better than to read any further.
I’ve recently returned from a wonderful week in NYC; I worked hard, I shopped harder, and I’ve contracted some kind of allergic reaction to the air. In total, this year I’ve spent over 5 weeks in the US of A, I’ve been there every years for the last ten and I’ve worked for Americans since I was 19. I’m not a card-carrying, gun-toting resident, but I have enough Americana in my life to comment with a degree of expertise on what has to be the most batshit-crazy, political-vacuum, money-centric sinkhole of a country that ever there was. #includingwhereverspiderscomefrom
Last week, while I was storming through my all of my bank account and some of Fifth Avenue in my activewear, another whackjob went postal on a schoolroom; this time in the relatively normal, (albeit God-fearing) organic coffee, peace-loving state of Oregon. This is the second time I’ve been in America at the time of a shooting rampage; the last time it was Gabrielle Giffords, the politician who survived a point blank shooting in Arizona. Watching American news coverage of mass shootings, even in the less right swinging states of California and New York, proffers some clue as to why this crazy-arse-nuttness keeps happening.
The producers, the anchormen, the writers, the editors, the commentators, the shock-jocks, the single cell amoeba that purport to cover news on Fox; all of them, to a person, love this shit. They paste their sad faces over the top of their orange makeup, they invent their hashtags, almost always starting with the word pray, and they analyse, scrutinise and dissect the latest tragedy until you can’t even tell if it is news media, or the latest episode of CSI. They lap it up, they hunt down the ex-Girlfriend, they turn the awfulness of senseless death into a Lifetime movie with a synthesised soundtrack and the viewers remain transfixed until they subside into their corn syrup coma.
Well I have an idea.
Perhaps we should just stop broadcasting the aerial shots of people running like ants into the carpark? Perhaps we should not interview the middle-aged postal worker who was three bloody blocks away in a gargantuan, noise-polluting Chevy, what he thinks the killer’s motive was? Perhaps we should not camp in front of the hapless shooter’s hapless-er parents’ house in the hope they’ll wander past the front window in their knickers and offer some kind of explanation as to what it was they fed their child that transformed him from cherub to Beelzebub? Perhaps, instead of quickly scheduling a candlelit vigil and sharing close-ups of the tear-stained faces of yet more sonless mothers and yet more daughterless fathers, we, the people, should collectively enforce a 100% media ban on all gun related violence… forever?
Many of us acknowledge the reason behind America’s prolific gun deaths is the almost candy-like accessibility of weapons (of mass destruction). I would argue that the constitutional right to bear arms is one thing; the right to 15 minutes of celluloid fame in a society ruled by doe-eyed women whose names start with K is something very different. #fameistherealamericandream
Congress, The Senate, the lawmakers and lawyers, even POTUS himself cannot win a war against the NRA. They have far too much money, too many Trumps, too many old white men with money, they are bribing anyone who’ll accept their greasy handshakes and state by state, they will overrule any government that attempts to legislate for greater control over weapons.
BUT…
We can win a war against sad, lonely, megalomaniacs whose entire life ambition is to top Twitter’s trending topics list. We can filibuster the egos of immature, uneducated, misinformed morons whose warped morals are learned in video games. We can ensure, that even if they do see through their homicidal tendencies, their identity will never, ever be known, they will never achieve notoriety, renown or social media acclaim for their crimes. Their victims will be mourned by their friends and their families in private, away from media circuses and candlelit vigils, as it should be. Wannabe mass murderers could buy a trillion NRA approved guns, they could slaughter half of their neighbourhood, but they will never ever become tabloid fodder or 140 character headlines.
While we’re at it, we could stop printing pictures of IS victims trembling in their orange overalls, cowering under the curve of a merciless machete. We could stop glorifying poor life choices à la Honey Boo Boo, Duggar, Loser or Bachelor? We could put an end to the pandemic blight of Kardashian-Jenner-Wests by never ever seeing their pinched and pulled faces ever, ever again?
If all of the media, social, public and whatever kind of parasite you classify Fox as, would take some kind of responsibility for the messages they circulate, the hatred they engender, the misinformation they broadcast, we might just give the NRA an excuse to evaporate all by itself. There would be no gun violence left to talk about.
So how about it America? How about you tweet a little more about the athletic splendour of the Williams sisters? How about you celebrate the scientific achievements of your Ivy League hospitals? Gloria Steinem, Toni Morrison, Michelle Obama, The Women’s football team, Bill Gates, Michael Moore and Robert de Niro. There are so many useful and interesting Americans we could hear from?
Oh say, can I see that?
Comments