Gadhafi or Sheen?

There seems to be times that the American media does not know what to do. News stations faintly understand the concept of morality (covering the potential rebellion of a country with United States’ oil ties versus the cocaine induced meltdown of a famous television sitcom star is slightly more imperative). And because the American media cannot possibly put widespread efforts on both of the unraveling stories, they have picked one, and that is the ranting and rave of Charlie Sheen. Last night my mother informed me that there was a primetime special on 20/20 featuring an interview with the former Two and a Half Man actor, and when I asked her “why do you care?”, she replied, “because I do,” and when I said, “why?”, she said, “because it’s sad and funny and makes me feel better about my own life”. That is the answer. In Mr. Sweeney’s class, we discussed the implication of religion and economics on the country’s political culture; we did not, however, go into detail about how altered America’s interests are in current political events that effect their opinions, future votes, etc.

The cartoon I found deals with what seems like an average American marriage; brunette, blonde, slightly overweight, television blaring, dog sleeping. The marriage epitomizes the typical American family and television viewer. The husband is saying “The childish rant is becoming even more senseless”, and the wife replies, “Moammar Gadhafi or Charlie Sheen?”, symbolizing that, in the last week, Gadhafi and Sheen both publicly made fools of themselves. Gadhafi blamed the current crisis on Osama Bin Ladin and cell phones, refusing to see the truth that has been slowly slapping him in the face for the past twenty years; Sheen’s cocaine induced ravings have caused social networks to explode in novel Sheen jokes.

To me, the message of the cartoon lies in including Gadhafi and Sheen in the same inquiry. It lies in the media covering the breakdown of Sheen as if it had future, important implications on our country. The important news is in Libya. People of a country that is known to harbor threatening terrorists have rebelled. All oil refineries in the country have shut down, causing Europe to face a potential oil crisis because they receive the majority of their oil from Libya. In class, we discussed what it means to recognize the “American political values”, and these two “crisis’s” (which do not even intersect in relevance) call me to question the American public’s civic duty. If people understood what was going on in places like Libya and Egypt, than perhaps they could circumvent similar catastrophes from occurring in other parts of the world in the future.