Let me entertain you

Take a look at the best performing companies in the US. Most of them are in the fast food business or in entertainment. This means that no matter how sordid the world seems, we will always cling to unreal thoughts that make us laugh and get us distracted for a while. We are sick of hearing how Madof embezzled for decades.

Sales of consoles and their video games were up in December even when everything else was falling. Movies are doing fine in this terrible economy, sports still get large crowds – although advertising is down – and concerts are scheduled as planned, meanwhile even tech industries face a tangled outlook.

This modern coliseum of entertainment is just part of well known effort to keep us from our ailing state of mine. Sports are a powerful force in shaping our lives, so do movies and lately real like video games – You Tube is the beginning of a new era of entertainment. But this also applies to politics, no wonder why Sarah Palin´s pregnant daughter got that much attention and the outstayed Blagojevich is a permanent gaga show.

I was watching the Australian open men´s final this last Sunday, and for a moment I completely forgot about the myriad of problems that we face, the millions of jobs lost, the negativity among many Republicans that just don´t seem to get it –naysayers to the stimulus plan – and finally my own despair.

Then I realize that we all need some distraction. It is good and it is not. As artists and big shot stars are destine to be in the spotlight – so we are distracted from our pity lives – politicians are also victims of the same parody. We are jealous of their success; we want them to fail – big.

Being frivolous about Britney Spear´s life is nothing to be ashamed of, her falling life enthused much more our TV sets than the raising price of oil. In the middle of this never ending economic crisis we tend to watch more sitcoms, funny movies, sport events, concerts, gossip about the stars, we hope that another politician gets caught with a prostitute – democrat – or that a gay man – republican – falls for a cop in the airport´s bathroom. Their subpar professional performance is part of their job.

From a strict business point of view being in entertainment is the right choice, recession prove? Even Tony Soprano heard complains that the mob was no longer recession proved – but good entertainment is. Unless we see Las Vegas in a harrowing free fall, there is nothing to worry about if you own a casino.

Fast food restaurants such as McDonalds are doing great, if you still want to feel like you can eat out – changing Zagat´s for Dennis may seem inappropriate – but when the economy is falling from a cliff, millions will do just that. One surprise was the poor performance of Starbucks, they are not just doing badly, they are also closing up hundreds of stores and plan to lay off thousands of employees.

Things are not just looking dim; they seem to be getting worst and with no exit in the near future. Obama only plays cool as he goes for a delicate consensus –laconic at least when we need certainty and punishment. If he only had the Bush determination to bully people around to make his top priorities work – it may have been Cheney bullying people around – we could be seeing a rapid increase in short term spending, plus reform in health care and social security. I wish that some oversight over Bush policies was also an Obama priority. He did made a statement on the sordid close to $20 billion in bonuses given by Wall Street last year. What we did not hear from him was the claim that these jackals should disgorge the money that was actually tax payer´s money. In any case these news are just part of the distraction, whether it is done on purpose we don´t know, but the final outcome is just as reveling. We are embedded by which poppy will the Obama family chose.

Needleless to say there is a sense of urgency in every word that is being expel from Obama, like Bush before him, everything has to be done at light speed, nothing short of a fully approved law will be allow when it comes to accountability. If you don´t do what I want, as fast as I want, then you will be to blame for this whole mess. He may chided lawmakers for their flimsy performance but without getting much reaction from them.

We got TVs that are running out of time, Obama has been pushing so analog TVs have more time before they go into history. We really don´t want millions of Americans thinking or reading the news instead of laughing at Rush Limbaugh or Bill O´Reily. We have to ban HBO before it runs too many Chris Rock´s performances. We want people to be entertained, we don´t want them to be entertained and think. That just won´t be right.

There is nothing wrong with any of this; we – the people – have to distract ourselves from this surreal world. Nowadays that we live more into private islands when we don´t seem to care much about social interaction – in the good all fashion manner – TV has been great at making us users of byproducts that keep us from thinking straight. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

What we have to worry about is the increase of distraction to epical levels – something that could unmoor our savage inner self – the sense that every event has to be bigger and better than the one before, that athletes have to run faster and farther than ever before, that TV shows have to be funnier and cleverer than anything before, that economic growth and recoveries have to be faster and greater, that production has to increase, that productivity has to be better, that barriers have to go down. Grandeur is our new god.

Obama was a good show – I am not saying that he is not smart enough to be president because he may be one of the smartest presidents ever – but he unhinges me with his rhetoric about change when he nominated Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer and Timothy Geithner to the highest ranks when they had some tax problems.

In any case, the world was shocked about his performances, his speeches draw thousands of attendees and his inauguration set a new record – that makes my point. Obama is a celebrity, but every politician is one. The difference is that so far, he is trying to make things better. I hope that he is able to restart the US engine as fast as possible. I can´t take another oxymoron.

Now that Obama has become the first black president of the United States there is no other minority that will drive that much attention. He was the first and everything after this is not much news. Although another Sarah Palin could do the trick for a while – that is until something happens with Britney Spears – cause the genocide in Darfur is just boring. Maybe Craig could seduce another man, or Spitzer get another prostitute, because illegal wiretapping is not good news. We are not interested in important stuff; we do not like the boring news about famine or the human abuses in Cuba, not just from Fidel, but in Guantánamo.

Don´t blame the media, blame yourself, cause you didn´t even finish this article, or you did and thought it was really boring. Maybe next time I should put some “naughty” thoughts in here – that will make the news. In the mean time, the entertainment industry will win big, unless of course you are in the porn industry – and you need a bailout.