Posts Tagged ‘Jonathan Franzen’

I woke up this morning with a word. Well, actually, a complete sentence and an unsettled feeling. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading about rams, canals,goats and horns, that I woke up with my heart racing, my blood pumping and a word: Amazon is the Anti-Christ.

Crazy, huh?

Now for you scientific folks who look to Stephen Hawking for the definitive word on God, you might want to hang tight. I’m not a linear thinker. I’m the sort that has to go around my elbow to get to my mouth but, eventually, I get there.

Like a lot of you, I’ve been thinking a lot about this notion that somehow or another after all that bloodshed, we’ve brought freedom to Iraq. Media has such a nifty way of tying everything up and bundling it off. We say things like “War Over” or “Troops Come Home” and the bulk of Americans go hop-skipping along, off to do their part for freedom’s sake — shopping.

Remember way back when, back when Destre, Carson and Grant’s daddy was an Army Ranger and not a tombstone in Arlington, when we were told the best thing we could do on behalf of our country was to get back to our normal routine of shopping?

We walked away, confused, with a shake of our heads and muttering “numbskull” and “dip-sh*t” and for about six weeks we collectively grieved.

But then oh-what’s his face came out with that patriotic Red, White and Blue song of his about putting a “boot up you arse” and everybody started making trash heaps out of all their Dixie Chick CDs, stomping on them with boots and running over them with John Deere tractors.

Nobody ever hears from the Dixie Chicks anymore. We taught those girls not to mess with the good ole U.S. of A, didn’t we? 

We like the mythology of war  — this notion that America represents the collective conscience of the world and that anytime we do something in the name of Democracy it’s for your own good, even when that something means blood runs in your streets and shopping for a loaf of bread is a matter of life and death.

We really hate thinking about the reality of war. Nothing is more unsettling to us than to be out in public, say like at the shopping mall over Labor Day weekend and seeing a young man with a titantium rod for a leg. If it weren’t for that distant look in his eyes, you might think he’d injured it in a car wreck. But that looking-off-over-yonder gaze, well, everybody knows what that means — Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  P.T.S.D.

There’s a bunch of Americans who don’t believe in P.T.S.D.  They think it’s just one more way to bilk the American taxpayer because, yeah, that’s the first thing on the mind of a boy or girl who has just seen their buddies blown to Kingdom Come– How can I spend the rest of my life living on the public dole?

Exhale.

I have to do that a lot, otherwise, my heart starts racing again like it was when I woke with a start this morning thinking that Amazon is the Anti-Christ.

I did a brief little poll yesterday. I asked people if they read or cared about the book reviews on Amazon. Collectively everybody said that yeah, they read them and yeah, they mattered. One fellow even said when he didn’t pay attention to the reviews and bought the book anyway, he was usually sorry he had.

Now I know when I asked that question folks were probably thinking that the reason I asked it is because I care about who is reading my reviews over at Amazon and if the reviews are hurting or helping the sales of my books.

But I wasn’t thinking that at all.

I was thinking about freedom and what it means when we as a nation go put our boot up the arse of another nation in order that they, too, can have a democracy like us, so that everyone in their country can be reading Jonathan Franzen’s latest epic. Because it seems to me, in my convoluted way of thinking about these matters, that freedom has nothing to do with the individual or his or her pursuit of happiness. It’s all about product placement.   

It’s all about Wall Street.

We tell ourseleves that we are a free nation but then we folo our peeps to see what the next hot item is so that we can all collectively run out enmasse to buy it. We wouldn’t want to be left out. That would be weird. To not own one of what everybody else owns.

Because shopping is the one true thing that binds us together. Not God. But Amazon.

Men and women have fought and died on battlefields all over the world so that you and I can can have freedom. (It occurs to me that the people who actually practice freedom are those who volunteer to protect it, given that only one-half of one percent of the nation’s population serves in the military. The cost of bearing the burden of democracy – government by majority rule – falls on the shoulders of a minority.)

These few suffer and die for the collective good of us all, for freedom’s sake.

Freedom to read what everyone tells us to read. Freedom to listen to the same damn Lady Gaga song that everyone else in the nation is listening to. Freedom to wear the same Nikes and North Face that everyone else is wearing. Freedom to live in the gated community where everybody else we want to emulate lives. Freedom to attend the same church that all the other people just like us attends. Freedom to watch Eat, Pray and Love, because, Lord knows, watching somebody else do it is so much easier than praciticing it ourselves.

I was just thinking that freedom ain’t what it used to be, back before Wall Street figured out that technology is a great way to manipulate the masses without us even being aware of it.

See?

Amazon really is the Anti-Christ.

Dear President Obama:

Hope this finds you well. I am sorry I haven’t made the time to write. It’s been a hectic year, what the demon dog nearly taking off the end of my nose and with the release of my latest book – Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?

It’s not exactly up to snuff with Franzen’s work but I think you’d find it entertaining. It might even give you some perspective on the state of the nation right now, which FoxNews keeps saying you need.  

That’s really what I want to speak to you about — the state of things. While I’m not a trained economist, I have made it my business to study our nation’s economic growth over the past few years, especially since that yellow-bellied low-life egg-sucking dawg of a man Bernie Madoff ripped off all those good-hearted people. (By the way, you might want to send some of your folks down to North and South Carolina and look into the affairs of David Cerullo. I think he’s ripped off the taxpayers in both those states in a similar fashion as Mr. Madoff, that egg-sucking dawg.)

Now, I’m an admitted hack. I wasn’t smart enough to get into any of them high-flutin’ schools like you and the Missus. The way I see it in this world you have to have brains, beauty, money or talent. I was short on the first three but turns out I did okay on that last one.  It helps that Mama taught me to work hard. There was a time in this country when a person could advance themselves through hard work.

That was back before Reality TV.

Back before Jon and Kate Gosselin became America’s model parents.

Now before you dismiss me, Mr. President, you should consider that when it comes to parenting, I know a thing or two. I raised four children to bright shining adulthood. They all are gainfully employed and have their own health insurance plans. They volunteer in their community; they call their mama or daddy nearly every day; they go to church on Sundays; and they do their family proud. Not a single one of them has ever spent the night in jail. As far as I know they haven’t held up any convenience stores and they have avoided public drunkenness and lewd behavior.

If this sounds like bragging, well I earned those rights. Their daddy and me, we worked hard to raise them up rightly. We banned television from our home and read to them from an early age. We taught them civic responsibility and public service. We prayed over them and we wept over them from time to time. They aren’t perfect but they are pretty darn fine people.

And the truth is, I know a bunch of folks just like them. In fact, I’m amazed at all the 20 and 30-years-olds I’ve met that are just like my kids. Good people. People who get that there’ is more to life than rabid consumerism and reality television. I am proud of every single one of ‘em. I wish you could spend an hour with my friend Sarah Thebarge or Penny Carothers or Hugh Hollowell. I could go on and on, naming names but it wouldn’t do any good.

Because it seems that these days, name dropping only counts if you’ve had your own reality TV show like the Gosselins. I wish somebody would explain to me how it is two people who can’t get along any better than these two people do, end up becoming authors of books on how to be a better baby mama or baby daddy. As far as I’m concerned that would be like Tiger Woods writing a book on faithfulness.

I tell you what, I liked to fell out when I learned Jon Gosselin was going to pen a book on fathering. Who prints this anyway? More importantly, what nimrod is going to buy a book written by a fellow who couldn’t follow simple directions in the grocery store? (Did you see that episode where Kate went banshee on him in Wal-Mart?)

I helped put you in office, Mr. President and so far, I don’t have too many regrets, though I have to tell you that whole bail-out thing? That was wrong-headed and it is gonna come back and bite you in the arse. Take my word for it. My friend Shellie, she thinks I’m a prophet. She told me I was going to die an ugly death because of it. I’m worried some about that.

But until then I’m just plain worried about the way Jon and Kate Gosselin have destroyed this country. Have you noticed that ever since they started making the cover of People magazine, the economy and our education system have completely tanked?

They should be considered a national security risk. I know we don’t send people off to Guantanamo now that you’re in charge, but couldn’t we send them to North Korea? Kim Jong-il seem to know how to put the fear of God in people.

I bet that if you packed up all the reality TV people on one boat and shipped them to North Korea, your ratings with the general public would greatly improve. It might even help you in the next election.

I’m pretty sure it would help the economy.

The only thing is you’d have to send an entire Navy fleet to get them there safely. Otherwise, they’d just turn their ship into a party boat and start filming another series.

I’m praying every night that God turns this country around and delivers us from the mass media that is Jon and Kate Gosselin.

I pray for you and the Missus and the girls, too.

Warmest Regards,

Karen Spears Zacharias