I know the tradition among media-types is to do a year-in-review kind of thing in which we revisit our favorite stories, make cutesy top 10 lists, et cetera, but I’m going to take a slightly different route and present to readers a list based on my experiences and thoughts inspired by 2011. I call it…
Stuff People Really Need To Keep In Mind In 2012
Neither the President nor any of his would-be GOP successors are evil people simply by virtue of the fact their ideologies are not your ideologies. Having a differing opinion or perspective does not provide just cause for hyperbolic, panic-stricken claims that so-and-so is trying to destroy America…and certainly not just cause for Hitler/Nazi comparisons.
The majority of reality TV shows are abominations. Shows like Jersey Shore, anything preceded by The Real Housewives of…, or with a Kardashian name attached to it are a pox on society. These shows pay ridiculous amounts of money to “real people” to behave in ways that would get a normal person arrested, or at the very least relentlessly mocked at social gatherings. They glamorize imbeciles, punks, and narcissists by packaging it as entertainment. We should not reward these people with fame and/or fortune. Stop paying attention to them.
Christianity, chill out. The “secular left” is not trying to destroy you or discriminate against you. What’s really happening here is, reasonable people are tired of being browbeaten by pious twits for daring to deviate from their standards — standards that, ironically, many self-described Christian politicians are very good at invoking, but very bad at following. When someone irks you, try the gentle answer or turning the other cheek approach rather than playing the victim or telling everyone what awful people they are.
On a related note: not everything that happens in the world happens for the express purpose of making you angry. Not everything is meant as an attack on all you hold dear. Stop looking for excuses to be pointlessly pissed off about trivial crap.
A note for Hollywood: 3-D is overdone and overrated. You know what would really get people into the theaters? Good movies. Stop raiding old TV shows and comic books for fodder, stop remaking great old movies that don’t need remaking. Try — and stay with me, because it’s a radical suggestion — original material. Because TV’s doing that and TV is kicking your hinders in terms of quality entertainment. TV. You know, that thing a lot of actors didn’t want to do instead of movies…that doesn’t cost $12 a pop for tickets and another $12 for a small soda and popcorn.
If 2011 taught us anything, it’s that focused protests can achieve a lot more than a bunch of people loitering for days and weeks on end in public parks. Thanks to people taking action in a focused and organized manner, Bank of America and Verizon abandoned plans for unnecessary fees, Netflix didn’t separate into two distinct entities, and — although this one still rankles me — Lowe’s dropped its advertising for “All-American Muslim.” And that last one only took a few hundred people expressing their religious intolerance in letter form!
Wind turbines do not necessarily cause negative health impacts because of their ultra-low-frequency sound emissions. That is a scientifically unproven point, despite what Dr. Nina Pierpont’s deeply flawed study suggests. Conversely, health effects caused by prolonged stress reactions are real and cannot be discounted because it’s inconvenient for the wind industry.
No one has 365 consecutive lousy days. You are not the exception to this rule. If your life really is kind of cruddy? Chances are, much of it is within your ability to change and you’re simply not exercising your authority over yourself, so stop wasting time blaming the world around you and make some changes.
Declaring that you are the first person to post in the comment section of a blog by posting, simply, “first” is obnoxious, pointless, and pathetic, so don’t do it (especially on this blog in response to this post in a sad attempt to be funny, because that only increases your lameness tenfold).
The views and opinions in the Enterprise blogs are those of the author and are not neccessarily shared by Falmouth Publishing.
