When We're Out Together Living Check To Check

Pardon me for the riff on the old Irving Berlin classic, "Cheek to Cheek", but I watched something on HBO Friday night that I thought I'd share.

This is something that struck me as absolutely hilarious and true all at once and, upon the ending of this particular "New Rule" (courtesy of Bill Maher's March 20th edition of Real Time), I immediately received a call from one of my best friends who exclaimed excitedly, "This is what we've been talking about for over a year!"

Maher basically starts out by poking fun at the riot for America's Next Top Model as seen here...



...by telling people to ask themselves questions like: "Are you six feet tall? Are you screwing Tom Brady? No? Then you're not a top model."

He goes on to draw a brilliant correlation between this type of behavior in American culture and the recent fiasco with AIG in the following monologue...

"When did Americans become the 'something-for-nothings'? When did we get this 'lotto' mentality that our only chance for success was to be plucked from obscurity and dropped onto Bret Michaels Love Bus?

Maybe it was when the super wealthy--you know, the ones who 'create jobs' when they get huge tax breaks--except they don't'--they buy antique commodes and lap dances--maybe it was when those 'job creators' stopped trickling the money down, leaving the working class with none of the gains and all of the cynicism that goes with thinking the game is fixed.

Maybe that's what leads to 'Guitar Hero' culture where everybody wants to be a rock star but nobody wants to learn the chords.

You know...Paris and Nicole and Kim are nice girls, but...let's not forget they do, and have done, nothing. Not even acted in anything they'd admit to. But they're not reviled or dismissed for being ciphers. They're adored for it. Because they exemplify the national ideal: they got a lot for doing nothing.

The AIG guys wanted a lot for not just doing nothing, but for failing--no matter that they are the very people who schemed their company into the ground--they want their bonuses.

And Myrna from Long Island wants to be a top model...

FUCK REALITY!"

You know, shortly before leaving Vegas, I remember having this inane conversation with someone...

Him: "How long do you think it would take to make a million dollars just starting out with $10?"

Me: "Doing...what?"

Him: "Okay...let's say you bet $10 and won, then took those winnings, bet again and won. If you keep on doing that, how long would it take you?"

Me: "That's insane. That's assuming you're going to win each time you bet."

Him: "Oh it's possible."

Well of course it's possible. Nearly anything is possible. But what he was positing was HIGHLY improbable.

You see...I ran into a lot of people out there with that mindset. It's the "get rich quick" (aka delusional) thinking that nearly brought our entire economic system into complete collapse. Sure, that thinking permeates the entire country, but it seemed to be concentrated out in the west because most of the people I met thought that they could just win all the time. Most only talked about their winnings. Yet, somehow, the casinos were still there and weren't going under which I found odd. With all these people raking in the cash, you'd think that place would be a ghost town by now!

However, I can understand their mentality to some degree. I've seen people work hard all their lives and always seem to end up treading water, living check to check and barely getting by. When the media promotes celebrities, sports figures, businesspeople and politicians making obscene amounts of money, people feel that they should be entitled to something as well.

More often than not, I agree...but nothing comes free. Hard work should better your life, not diminish it.

Somehow we've strayed from that concept...and we've only got ourselves to blame.

You know we've got a huge problem when I'M the one espousing the desire to get back to reality!

;)