I may just be reeling from the residue of nastiness that is the New York/Long Island/Jewish-Italian/West Palm Beach/Boca experience... but maybe what this country really needs is some hardcore, humble pie, Third World country, Great Depression Era suffering.
This past Thanksgiving season, on "Black Friday" (forever more, aptly titled) in the wee hours of the morning, the doors opened at a Wal-Mart store in Valley Stream Long Island. A stampede ensued crushing a Wal-Mart worker to death. TO DEATH! The man died because a bunch of suburbanite American consumers needed a flat screen TV. Many of the consumers simply walked over the man lying on the ground, or when they found out that he had just been trampled they basically shrugged and kept shopping... they... kept... SHOPPING!
On March 16th of this year, auditioners for America's Top Model stampeded down a Manhattan street for a chance of fulfilling their American dream of staring vacuously and vacant at a camera, wearing over priced designer clothing created for women with the physical attributes of Auschwitz survivors.
Starting with Bill Clinton's cozying up to Wall Street from 1996 until leaving office in 2000 coupled with NAFTA and the rise and fall of the dot-com revolution, were we really surprised by the likes of Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Arthur Andersen, Tyco (and the list goes on and on)? But were we even more surprised when after the Towers fell, our then President George W. Bush's answer to how to react to the terrorist threat was to... go out and shop! And now we have Bernie Madoff and dozens and dozens of Ponzi schemes worldwide.
If our government and top earning executives think the sky is the limit and the answer to every question is: spend more—then, why should it be surprising that the entire system seems to have imploded right under our supposed “over-taxed”, over-indulged, over-stimulated, maxed out credit card asses???
But back to the stampeding Wal-Mart consumers and wannabe models – and adding to that the middle class savages that I had on my flight tonight from West Palm Beach to John F. Kennedy International... for all the great things that we as Americans are – we're also a spoiled, obnoxious, childish, obstinate, self-serving bunch that somehow assumes we’re entitled simply because we’re American (or more specifically: Jews from West Palm, WASPs from Connecticut, Italians from Long Island, or undereducated Blacks or Latinos from any urban environment or U.S. common wealth).
When it comes to our collective douchebagishness – we’re all in this together! Considering that a large portion of the U.S. populace does not possess a passport, many of our fellow country-folk have never ventured outside of our borders. I mean, not even to Canada or Mexico: The OTHER America (we call ourselves Americans. But to the rest of the world, we’re part of a continent known as North America which consists of Canada and Mexico – hence they’re Americans toooooo! So, the United States of America is part of a larger tapestry – a tapestry that consists of our socialist friends to the north and south that just don’t seem to “get it” the way we do).
Judging from what I’ve learned and observed working as a flight attendant for a major U.S. airline for the past five years, most American consumers have no real concept of what it actually means to suffer. If your television goes out during the course of the flight and you think you’re entitled to some kind of financial retribution or have the right to throw a temper tantrum and demand something be done about this immediately – as if to infer it’s some sort of a moral affront to you that you can’t watch TV during your two hour flight – you need to spend a week in a South African, Indian or South American slum. And if there’s a smell in the cabin that doesn’t sit well with your delicate sensibilities and the thought of having to endure slight discomfort causes you to say something like: “You mean we just have to sit here and suffer…?” Yeah, you probably really need to suffer. Like, you need a month on Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) kind of suffering. You need to go through what some of your relatives may have gone through during World War II in Nazi Germany if you think what you’re experiencing now in coach class is suffering.
Basically, YOU, the forty-something, Jewish American Princess from Long Island with the fake tits, spoiled daughter and loads of botox – you need to suffer more. YOU, the fat, too much cologne wearing, smug, Conservative, Limbaugh listening, gold chain nestled on the tuft of grey chest-hair and sunburned skin who turns up your nose at me because I don’t have a lime for your gin and tonic – you need to suffer. YOU the obnoxious, Yankee baseball cap wearing, thick Staten Island accent guinea that makes me embarrassed to be of Italian decent -- YOU, who thinks you’re Tony Soprano and is angry beyond comprehension because your flight is delayed due to weather and you want to fight about it… you really need to suffer – Gitmo style.
And to you motherfuckers of flight 832 from West Palm Beach to JFK that was diverted to Atlantic City – for how you behaved and the way you left the aircraft by sufficiently trashing it beyond comprehension like the savages you are – I truly hope you suffered. But I don’t think you suffered enough, mostly because you actually thought you were suffering. And you, the woman in row three who actually thought that your TV going out was a reason to throw a temper tantrum; you are a Wal-Mart stampeder – infinitely and cosmically linked in some Universal Way to a giant black hole in the galaxy that sucks all common sense, decency and civility out of our society. Essentially, you suck… and you should suffer.
To all of you, my “friends", my fellow Americans: I wish this current recession upon you. I wish a great, great, GREATER Depression – the likes of which the world has never seen – on you because when you truly learn what it ACTUALLY means to suffer, it – as the Immortal Bard wrote in Henry V: “might gentle (your) condition.”
This past Thanksgiving season, on "Black Friday" (forever more, aptly titled) in the wee hours of the morning, the doors opened at a Wal-Mart store in Valley Stream Long Island. A stampede ensued crushing a Wal-Mart worker to death. TO DEATH! The man died because a bunch of suburbanite American consumers needed a flat screen TV. Many of the consumers simply walked over the man lying on the ground, or when they found out that he had just been trampled they basically shrugged and kept shopping... they... kept... SHOPPING!
On March 16th of this year, auditioners for America's Top Model stampeded down a Manhattan street for a chance of fulfilling their American dream of staring vacuously and vacant at a camera, wearing over priced designer clothing created for women with the physical attributes of Auschwitz survivors.
Starting with Bill Clinton's cozying up to Wall Street from 1996 until leaving office in 2000 coupled with NAFTA and the rise and fall of the dot-com revolution, were we really surprised by the likes of Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Arthur Andersen, Tyco (and the list goes on and on)? But were we even more surprised when after the Towers fell, our then President George W. Bush's answer to how to react to the terrorist threat was to... go out and shop! And now we have Bernie Madoff and dozens and dozens of Ponzi schemes worldwide.
If our government and top earning executives think the sky is the limit and the answer to every question is: spend more—then, why should it be surprising that the entire system seems to have imploded right under our supposed “over-taxed”, over-indulged, over-stimulated, maxed out credit card asses???
But back to the stampeding Wal-Mart consumers and wannabe models – and adding to that the middle class savages that I had on my flight tonight from West Palm Beach to John F. Kennedy International... for all the great things that we as Americans are – we're also a spoiled, obnoxious, childish, obstinate, self-serving bunch that somehow assumes we’re entitled simply because we’re American (or more specifically: Jews from West Palm, WASPs from Connecticut, Italians from Long Island, or undereducated Blacks or Latinos from any urban environment or U.S. common wealth).
When it comes to our collective douchebagishness – we’re all in this together! Considering that a large portion of the U.S. populace does not possess a passport, many of our fellow country-folk have never ventured outside of our borders. I mean, not even to Canada or Mexico: The OTHER America (we call ourselves Americans. But to the rest of the world, we’re part of a continent known as North America which consists of Canada and Mexico – hence they’re Americans toooooo! So, the United States of America is part of a larger tapestry – a tapestry that consists of our socialist friends to the north and south that just don’t seem to “get it” the way we do).
Judging from what I’ve learned and observed working as a flight attendant for a major U.S. airline for the past five years, most American consumers have no real concept of what it actually means to suffer. If your television goes out during the course of the flight and you think you’re entitled to some kind of financial retribution or have the right to throw a temper tantrum and demand something be done about this immediately – as if to infer it’s some sort of a moral affront to you that you can’t watch TV during your two hour flight – you need to spend a week in a South African, Indian or South American slum. And if there’s a smell in the cabin that doesn’t sit well with your delicate sensibilities and the thought of having to endure slight discomfort causes you to say something like: “You mean we just have to sit here and suffer…?” Yeah, you probably really need to suffer. Like, you need a month on Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) kind of suffering. You need to go through what some of your relatives may have gone through during World War II in Nazi Germany if you think what you’re experiencing now in coach class is suffering.
Basically, YOU, the forty-something, Jewish American Princess from Long Island with the fake tits, spoiled daughter and loads of botox – you need to suffer more. YOU, the fat, too much cologne wearing, smug, Conservative, Limbaugh listening, gold chain nestled on the tuft of grey chest-hair and sunburned skin who turns up your nose at me because I don’t have a lime for your gin and tonic – you need to suffer. YOU the obnoxious, Yankee baseball cap wearing, thick Staten Island accent guinea that makes me embarrassed to be of Italian decent -- YOU, who thinks you’re Tony Soprano and is angry beyond comprehension because your flight is delayed due to weather and you want to fight about it… you really need to suffer – Gitmo style.
And to you motherfuckers of flight 832 from West Palm Beach to JFK that was diverted to Atlantic City – for how you behaved and the way you left the aircraft by sufficiently trashing it beyond comprehension like the savages you are – I truly hope you suffered. But I don’t think you suffered enough, mostly because you actually thought you were suffering. And you, the woman in row three who actually thought that your TV going out was a reason to throw a temper tantrum; you are a Wal-Mart stampeder – infinitely and cosmically linked in some Universal Way to a giant black hole in the galaxy that sucks all common sense, decency and civility out of our society. Essentially, you suck… and you should suffer.
To all of you, my “friends", my fellow Americans: I wish this current recession upon you. I wish a great, great, GREATER Depression – the likes of which the world has never seen – on you because when you truly learn what it ACTUALLY means to suffer, it – as the Immortal Bard wrote in Henry V: “might gentle (your) condition.”
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