A few years ago, when Tina Fey was still on Weekend Update, she did a story about how the education secretary was doing a study on why girls weren’t pursuing careers in math and science. Tina Fey responded with, “Why?” she stood up and continued, “When you got an ass like this you don’t hide it in a lab.”
Now, it’s a joke…and a damn funny one…but when I saw it as a gif on tumblr, I realized how true it is. Where most countries and cultures value succeeding in business and academia…America seems to value succeeding in being vapid.
We don’t care that we’re last among developed countries for education and healthcare, or that most high school students can’t located a foreign country on a map. As long as they look good and can tell you the full name of the newest Kardashian baby….they’re on the right path.
Our government shut down. The House Republican’s held us hostage because of their temper tantrum over ‘Obamacare’ and so 19,000 kids couldn’t go to head start, NASA can’t tell us if an asteroid is headed toward Earth, but their six figure salaries are getting paid and do you know what was trending on Twitter while this was going on? I’ll tell you because social media is my day job:
Congress
New York
#governmentshutdown
#SoundCloud
#music
#momtexts
Chicago
#shutdown
Netflix
Target
I scrolled 3 hours back under the #governementshutdown hashtag and didn’t find a single non news corporation tweet. People just aren’t talking about it. #Obamacare hashtag is snarky jokes mostly by second-rate celebs. Why isn’t there a real conversation on this? This is serious. When Australia had a government shut down the Queen fired parliament. We make jokes?
Why don’t we value information? Why do we buy into this b.s? Why don’t we call these assholes on their lies and manipulations? Why don’t we stand up and say, “You are not making another dime until you put on your big boy pants and fix this mess”? Why? Oh, I know…because Kim Kardashian went out in a really ugly dress and we need to discuss that.
