Things I Don't Get: Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo

To get me back in the blogging spirit, I am launching a brand new segment I like to call:

Things I Don't Get

I am happy and proud to be American. I love our independent spirit. When freedoms are taken away I take it a little bit personally.  All that aside, there are many times when I wonder if I was secretly born in another country and planted here, because I just don't understand aspects of my own uniquely American culture.

As a lover of television, I don't have any problems admitting that I watch a lot of television.  I do watch  some unscripted "reality" programming, but I am definitely picky.  When it comes to reality shows, I would much rather watch The Amazing Race, or shows like The Hero over shows that just generally titillate our voyeuristic side.  I like shows that improve lives, like HGTV where they renovate, or Bar Rescue or Restaurant Impossible where dying businesses are given a new lease on life.

What I have yet to understand is a show like Toddlers & Tiaras.  As exploitative and creepy as dressing children up and teaching them to act sexy and dress like adults is in the first place, the broadcast of such a culture on television is opening it up to an even wider exploitation.

However, this one child who they nicknamed Honey Boo-Boo is even more weird of a phenomenon.  Toddlers & Tiaras was apparently too small for her, so they gave her a spinoff show that follows her and her family.

The poor girl is definitely one of the homelier children I have seen.  Everyone should know their strengths and play to them, and while I don't argue that she has some personality that she could nourish with an adequate education, at this point in her life she is not a model.  Yet she is paraded around as though she was the most beautiful little girl in the U.S.

To make matters worse, the whole culture of the show seems to be to highlight bad behavior and the strangeness of her family.  As they ramp up for their second season, I was shocked, grossed-out, and utterly appalled by the ad campaign.  You see, to make you feel like you are truly part of the show, the premiere episode for this season has available a "Watch 'n' Sniff" card.

Because really, who wouldn't want to smell bad milk or fish while watching the episode?

The end of the commercial features Honey Boo-Boo farting, just to class up the whole affair.

Is this what America is all about now? Is this an image that we as Americans want to be proud of?

I just don't get it. It is a massive cultural disconnect.  If that is American culture I feel like a woman completely displaced.

The Fade Out

Having dated enough people, and being the age that I am, I have become accustomed to having seriously low expectations going into any date.  In fact, meeting anyone even casually I have learned to have really no expectations in the beginning.  Why? Because having too high of hopes has come to mean serial disappointment.

However, having low expectations going into many situations has provided me with many a happy payoff. Example? Going to a cheap movie.  If I have any doubts about a movie's quality, I can merely wait until it hits the discount theater.  Then it's a very low risk proposition.  Most times I'm going to at least enjoy $4 worth of movie and the company of a friend or family member. The only exception would be the steaming pile that was Drive that was so gruesome I couldn't sit through it, at which point my friend of mine and I walked out of the theater.

So frankly, I'm not willing to go all-in unless I feel it is a solid investment. This applies emotionally as well.  The males of the human race have disappointed me so many times, that my expectations are way low.  I do expect you to treat me well, but frankly I don't have much hope of you sticking around. So far you have a really poor track record, guys.

In fact I was introduced to someone over the phone. I have since then had close to two months of phone conversations, where it seemed like our conversation was nice and I might at least get a friend out of the deal, and where a future relationship wasn't totally out of the question due to one or the other of us being married or something.  This was nice! We had much in common including a similar religious background.

Things were putting along nicely. Even for just friendship it was better than other male friendships.

Now two weeks have gone by, and nothing.

Radio silence.

I think I know what this means: the fade out.

One of my grand pet peeves is the fade out.  Except sometimes it's even worse, because it's the drop off the face of the earth.  I had this happen with a pen pal of mine who did send me some sort of cryptic email about not being around much in the future, things were happening, but know what good friends we were.

Um, okay.  I guess it was his way of trying to be polite and say that he had no interest in even being friends with me anymore.  Why? Who the heck knows.  But now I've got a couple years worth of emails, memories of fun phone calls, a handful of nice gifts (that were frankly better than any romantic suitor ever gave me) and me left with more emotional baggage to unpack.

After a while I start to feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day living the same date over and over, but getting slapped earlier and earlier.

It starts to make me wish every date, every friendly encounter could be accompanied by the exit survey.  When leaving a job for a major company, everyone has to go through an exit  interview.  Mine could easily read:

What exactly did you find unsatisfying about this relationship?  Check all that apply:

• Talks about movies I don't like.
• Too intense/hardcore
• Is too disorganized.
• Believes Han shot first.
• I'm intimidated by her artistic talent.
• Television tastes don't line up.
• Excessive use of the phrase, "Seriously?"
• Snorts a little when laughing.
• She hasn't read Green Lantern.
• She likes The Big Bang Theory and refers to them as her kindred spirits.
• Hasn't watched Dr. Who.
• Hasn't watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
• Loves Firefly.
• I'm intimidated by her intelligence.
• Knows how to build her own computer.
• Knows the definition of the word "defenestration" and has used it in casual conversation.
• Doesn't call me because she claims she doesn't like to talk on the phone much.
• Laughs too much.  Finds me too funny.
• Likes World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2 a little too much.
• Snores.
• Doesn't drive.
• Likes buttered popcorn flavored Jelly Bellys. 
• Reads too much Harry Potter, Stephen King, or Dean Koontz.
• Watches too much football.
• Likes to analyze things.
• Is klutzy.
• Hasn't fit into a size 8 since she was about 10 years old.
• Lives in California.
• Likes old movie musicals.
• Blogs about everything.
• Wants to write and publish novels.
• Is allergic to Glade air fresheners. I love Glade.  It just wouldn't work.
• Got a girlfriend and didn't want to tell you.
• I'm married and realized you're a good person who wouldn't do anything dastardly.
• Got bored.
• Scared of liking someone.
• Don't even want to be friends with a girl that I wouldn't want to marry.
• Other_________________________________________________________

It would just be nice if I had a clue.  It seems the more time passes in my life, the less able I am to see anything that would remotely tip me off that he's going to disappear.

Future friends/suitors of America listen up: stop it! Either be there or don't be there, but don't just fall off the edge of the earth and call it a fade out.  Better yet, be friends.  Just friends.  Taper off.  At least claim business at work, or craziness at home, or something that is just going to take too much time and I may not hear from you for a long while.  Whatever. Then send me a card on Christmas. Don't just disappear.

It's just mean. Don't be mean.  Be nice.

Lance Armstrong's Crucible

Photo from LA Observed

When we were in high school reading plays like The Crucible was always an exercise in exploring the savagery of the past, but apparently the days of using circumstantial evidence to prove someone’s innocence or guilt are far from over.  Like a group of prepubescent tattletales, the USADA gleefully plunked the 1,000 page tome that the USADA plopped in front of the American public as proof that they can and would strip Armstrong of his seven tour titles, and the expectation that their judgment would be final.   The past few days would turn into a wild theater, where the public gets to wallow in self-righteousness, pastors get to blog about Armstrong sewing what he reaps, and the media gets to wag their fingers and shake their heads at the downfall of another hero.

And while the UCI has also decided to turn its back on Armstrong after failing to find proof enough to strip him themselves, they decide to uphold the USADA’s ruling and take all titles away.   While the media continues to chime in about how “damning” the evidence is, and how this proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Armstrong is guilty, without any of us reading these documents aren't we just falling into some sort of media echo chamber?  Instead we read headlines and listen to soundbites of quoted testimony from teammates who create this image of Armstrong as a moustache-twirling godfather of cycling, tying innocent fellow cyclists to the railroad tracks and injecting them with performance enhancing chemicals to force a win. 

While I do not claim to have read the entirety of what is someone’s obvious grand opus of a document, I did bother to glance over the introduction and then get to the meatier pages surrounding the evidence being lobbed against Armstrong.  By far the most damning evidence is all, and I repeat all, testimony.  Verbal testimony by people who worked with Armstrong and who have admitted to having seen him do something.  Emails are included of calendars where Armstrong (gasp) left off a few dates, likely because he would like to be a human being for a few days without some stranger knocking on his door at 3am with a needle and syringe.  Many of the same people who have testified have admitted to having been given deals to lighten their punishment significantly by helping to tie Armstrong to the stake.

The so-called scientific evidence could easily be picked apart by anyone who has even a courtroom-drama level knowledge of the law.  The report openly admits that much of the testing hadn’t been honed until the past several years, toward the tail end and well after Armstrong’s career was through.  As well, footnotes cite that handling of the samples wasn’t always good, that practices weren’t always consistent, etc.  While medical experts also give testimony throughout, there are constant caveats about testing samples, and no evidence that there was any broad spectrum comparison done across samples from every other competitor in Le Tour.  As you flip through page after page, it becomes less a matter of convincing, and more an exercise in overreaching.  And begs the question, why was the USADA so desperate to take this man down?

The answer may lie more in what they win if the USADA destroys Armstrong’s career.  While it’s not a government entity,  millions of funding for the non-profit come from the office of the drug czar, which in its infancy would field scripts for television shows and reward them with monetary incentives if they changed their programming to a stronger anti-drug message.  With a big win under its belt it not only is guaranteed to continue to get funding to go after more athletes, but can do so partially on the taxpayer’s dime.   What’s perhaps more disturbing then? That the UCI, an international organization, would honor the ruling of the USADA and strip Armstrong of his titles officially.  By doing so, they allow the USADA to prove that they have international power over international sports, which is a rather large overreach.

For every charge of grand conspiracies and huge networks working together, there is an equal charge that must be laid on the USADA for bribing witnesses with softened penalties in exchange for fingering Armstrong.

Even if we give the USADA the benefit of the doubt for what I would consider to be a shaky case at best, and say that Lance Armstrong indeed participated in doping, as did the other people who testified, what next? The problem with laying a case where doping was so ubiquitous and rampant that everyone was doing it, is that if you plan on having even a modicum of fairness, you would have to go back and test and reread the results from every competitor in every tour Lance participated in.

Further, since more and more people have come forward saying that everyone was involved in doping of some sort, wouldn’t that mean that Lance was competing on an even playing field?  And, if you are only going to allow someone who has not doped be on record as a Tour winner, who exactly are you going to find?  Is the next in line going to be carefully examined to make sure he wasn’t a doper as well? And who will fund these intense investigations?  What kind of sport will it become if you have to go back ten or more years and rewrite every victory and can only give it to some schmoe who came in 142^nd in the tour and was the lone representative of the country of Andorra?

When will the nonsense end?