Sarah Palin Wins Debate!

I think in this age of irony, metacommentary and hyper-self-awareness, sometimes, in the effort to be arch or urbane or just clever in that obnoxiously superior smug way that has been made almost a lingua franca dialect in all modes of communication since the coming-of-age of my beloved Generation X, people plain ole forget to state simple fact.

In our effort to punish sincerity not only when spoken, but even at the conceptual stage, I think we sometimes forget that somewhere in there, there are a few simple, obvious facts that need to be expressed, for the sake of basic information or, alternately, just so we can have a good solid base to stand on when we decide it's time to piss all over something instead.

Could we, in some cases, take the time to examine--or even consider--ideas before subjecting them to the automatic urinary baptism? Sure. We could. But if MSNBC and Fox News tells us anything, it's that "news" is not what's important. What's important is having a position on what the news presents. And that position has to be RIGHT NOW. Not only right now, but FOREVER. Any change in that position over time, any mulling or shifting or evolving in light of new information is frowed upon as the empty intellectual exercise of dangerous, dangerous elites.

Elites are OK in certain contexts. Say you want to tie a sweater around your neck or maybe hook up your new MP3-capable stereo. Elites are an important limited-use commodity in an information society.

Just never, ever, sit down and watch Jeopardy! with an elite. Because elites, all they care about is Facts. And Things to Know. Not for the sake of knowing it, no; they just want to make the rest of us feel stupid. What's the capital of Zanzibar? FUCK YOU, that's the capital of Zanzibar, Mr. Elite.

What's the proper way to mathematically convert grams to ounces? Gosh, I'm not sure. Let me express it in whole numbers by repeatedly punching you in the liver. Go ahead, start counting.

Elites and their facts... see, you have to take them in small doses. That's not that hard to do because, by nature, elites are limited in size as a group. That's what makes them elites. We just pray that, one day, interbreeding amongst such a closed, limited society will one day bring them down to our level.

And that's why we don't get "facts" on the news, we get analysis, we get punditry. Because we don't want to know stuff so much as we want to know how to feel about stuff, like presidential candidates and hurricanes and financial crises and George Clooney and Listerine and the new Chevy Malibu and Gatorade and Sarah Palin and illegal immigration.

So we forget to state facts because facts alienate people and people buy things and people buying things, well, that's what makes the fundamentals of our economy so strong. It's gotten to the point where we can simply skip events altogether and jump right to the post-mortem, complete with reaction quotes!

I can't tell you how upset I was when I read this headline: Facebook profiles can reveal narcissism, study suggests. Well, no kidding. Really? Is Clay Aiken gay too?

You can't just say something obvious like "Facebook is for narcissists" without giving it a grander schema for understanding what it means. Is it the end of the altruism and community-thinking that animated the World War II generation and, thus, the snapping of the last vertebra of the backbone that once held America up? Or, conversely, is it the final death of the "all kids have low self-esteem" crisis we were told gave us the crack epidemic and teenagers having babies (and, not coincidentally, loads of twitchy crack babies) in the 1980s?

Nobody will say. Now all I've got is this "fact." What the hell am I supposed to do with that?