Thursday, December 6, 2012

My Thoughts On This Valiant Nebraska Girl



*To address what's truly important first;  I appreciate middle-era Green Day myself and have always thought it rather underrated by the public at large.  I can't say I adore them at the level of Dylan Queen or P-Funk but hey, 'Warning', 'Minority',  'Brain Stew/Jaded' and 'Walking Contradiction' are all perfectly solid tunes.  Of course all anyone really remembers from this period is 'Time of Your Life' and the way it Borg Assimilated every modern rock/soft rock/top 40 radio station or high school related function for a full decade after its release; and that's a shame. Still it's no fault but our own that pablum sells. 

*At a somewhat more serious level.  I hope that no serious pundit or social will use this incident as a pretext for the next codgery kids-these-days rant, claiming that the mass access to fame provided by Youtube, Facebook, etc. is raising human foolishness to levels never even dreamed of in the good old days; because that simply isn't so.  People are precisely as stupid as we have ever been, no more and if anything a good deal less, in spite of the myriad examples of stupidity like the above that are still out there.  It wasn't the woman's on-camera end-zone dance that got her caught anyway. Rather it was robbing a bank in a small village where everyone knew everyone and knew exactly who they were being robbed by immediately.  That form of stupidity is by no means particular to our own time and certainly doesn't rely on modern technology. Not that Al Capone or John Dillinger ever shunned the limelight anyway. 

*  Finally, in punishing this woman, I hope that the judge and jury in punishing this woman do take into account the fact that what she did was quite indisputably.  I am not such wannabe-trickster nihilist to suggest that being funny attones for threatening lives destroying property or child abuse, but it counts for a hell of a lot alright?  Yes dear, the system truly is nothing but a game anyway, and it's one that you just lost on an unforced fumble.  The ones who are truly smart and dangerous enough to realize that the system is just a game are the ones that go into banking.  Everyone knows that. Several years from now, when you're parolled and hopefully somewhat wiser, we can go on and on about how the search of purpose leads people of all ages to do and think stupid things; how the young seek purpose in dramatic self-destruction while the old seek purpose in stasis and mindless dogma, or even how these two impulses feed off each other in war, terrorism, etc.  Feel free to call me up when you get out, and be sure to let me know if that band gig of yours looks promising.








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