By Marta H. Mossburg Monday, January 28, 2013
It's passed the deadline, but Time magazine should have made Manti Te'o
the man of the year. In case you have been living in a hole the past
week, Te'o is the star Notre Dame linebacker whose heartbreaking story
of his grandmother and girlfriend dying within hours of each other in
September made national headlines.
As it turns out, the girlfriend was not real, nor was her death. Te'o, a
Heisman finalist, only knew "Lennay Kekua" online and through phone
calls. Multiple media outlets amplified Te'o's wrenching story without
checking her validity until Deadspin.com broke the story of her
non-existence last week.
The story is tantalizing for its embarrassing revelations about a
revered college football player, but most importantly it encapsulates
how fake is the new real in American life.
Like Te'o, millions of Americans spend hours online each day
communicating with "friends" they never meet, investing months and
sometimes years with those who not uncommonly turn out to be
impersonators. The frauds and their victims even have a TV show,
"Catfish."
Those under 30 do not talk to one another. Their phones are merely
vehicles for texting and social media, which they use for everything
high and low, including breaking up with "girlfriends" and "boyfriends"
with acronyms. INYIM, Ok?
As noted in a recent column, college freshman rank themselves very high
for their leadership ability, intelligence and drive, but are no smarter
than previous generations according to objective measurements. They
also study a lot less.
Lest people attribute this to the immaturity and narcissism of youth, it is not.
Our whole culture is phony. We call a cocktail of poor health indicators
in men "ED" and label the declining energy of men as they age "Low T."
Ads for drugs to cure these "sicknesses" dominate primetime television.
Parents rush to diagnose rambunctious children with "ADD" and "ADHD" to
get prescription drugs that make them easier to handle and the "free"
personalized help from school systems to launch their children ahead of
others.
We espouse hard work and resilience but are more dependent than ever on food stamps and disability insurance.
Even our heroes are frauds. World renowned cyclist Lance Armstrong
denied for over a decade that he used performance enhancing drugs to
help him win seven Tour de France titles, among other major
victories. Earlier this month, he admitted in an interview with Oprah
Winfrey that he lied and may even have obfuscated the full extent of
his behavior in the interview according to reports. To those for whom
climate change is their animating cause, their leader former Vice
President Al Gore, also the writer of "An Inconvenient Truth," did the
impossible. He sold his cable channel Current TV to Al Jazeera, owned by
what people of Gore's persuasion would call "Big Oil."
We yearn for the "authentic" but buy fake handbags made in China, drink
"craft" beers made by mega corporations and eat "heirloom grains" whose
prices have been driven so high by western demand the indigenous people
growing them can't afford to eat them.
Even the president is in on the game. During his second inaugural
address he said, "The commitments we make to each other through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security
these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do
not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make
this country great." What a beautifully rendered falsehood about three
programs that virtually no economist of any political persuasion can
deny are bankrupting the United States and jeopardizing both our
economic health and national security.
To top it all off, pop star Beyonce lip-synched the national anthem at the inauguration.
How fitting a performance for a nation that cares more about image than reality.
It's passed the deadline, but Time magazine should have made Manti Te'o
the man of the year. In case you have been living in a hole the past
week, Te'o is the star Notre Dame linebacker whose heartbreaking story
of his grandmother and girlfriend dying within hours of each other in
September made national headlines.
As it turns out, the girlfriend was not real, nor was her death. Te'o, a
Heisman finalist, only knew "Lennay Kekua" online and through phone
calls. Multiple media outlets amplified Te'o's wrenching story without
checking her validity until Deadspin.com broke the story of her
non-existence last week.
The story is tantalizing for its embarrassing revelations about a
revered college football player, but most importantly it encapsulates
how fake is the new real in American life.
Like Te'o, millions of Americans spend hours online each day
communicating with "friends" they never meet, investing months and
sometimes years with those who not uncommonly turn out to be
impersonators. The frauds and their victims even have a TV show,
"Catfish."
Those under 30 do not talk to one another. Their phones are merely
vehicles for texting and social media, which they use for everything
high and low, including breaking up with "girlfriends" and "boyfriends"
with acronyms. INYIM, Ok?
As noted in a recent column, college freshman rank themselves very high
for their leadership ability, intelligence and drive, but are no smarter
than previous generations according to objective measurements. They
also study a lot less.
Lest people attribute this to the immaturity and narcissism of youth, it is not.
Our whole culture is phony. We call a cocktail of poor health indicators
in men "ED" and label the declining energy of men as they age "Low T."
Ads for drugs to cure these "sicknesses" dominate primetime television.
Parents rush to diagnose rambunctious children with "ADD" and "ADHD" to
get prescription drugs that make them easier to handle and the "free"
personalized help from school systems to launch their children ahead of
others.
We espouse hard work and resilience but are more dependent than ever on food stamps and disability insurance.
Even our heroes are frauds. World renowned cyclist Lance Armstrong
denied for over a decade that he used performance enhancing drugs to
help him win seven Tour de France titles, among other major
victories. Earlier this month, he admitted in an interview with Oprah
Winfrey that he lied and may even have obfuscated the full extent of
his behavior in the interview according to reports. To those for whom
climate change is their animating cause, their leader former Vice
President Al Gore, also the writer of "An Inconvenient Truth," did the
impossible. He sold his cable channel Current TV to Al Jazeera, owned by
what people of Gore's persuasion would call "Big Oil."
We yearn for the "authentic" but buy fake handbags made in China, drink
"craft" beers made by mega corporations and eat "heirloom grains" whose
prices have been driven so high by western demand the indigenous people
growing them can't afford to eat them.
Even the president is in on the game. During his second inaugural
address he said, "The commitments we make to each other through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security
these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do
not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make
this country great." What a beautifully rendered falsehood about three
programs that virtually no economist of any political persuasion can
deny are bankrupting the United States and jeopardizing both our
economic health and national security.
To top it all off, pop star Beyonce lip-synched the national anthem at the inauguration.
How fitting a performance for a nation that cares more about image than reality.
