Sad times


It's become pretty clear that we as a nation have become so detached from reality during the past couple of decades. We're fat. We have bad road rage. Millions voted for George W. Bush - twice. During the past few weeks, I've been watching news coverage of the famine that's currently under way in Niger. These stories seem to roll around once every few years and life goes on.

I'm a huge fan of Sports Illustrated's NFL writer Peter King. If you're not familiar with Peter, he writes a weekly column on cnnsi.com. I look forward to it every morning. It's full of insight. It's written well and has a great personal tone to it.

So, what do these two things have in common? Well, in this past Monday's column, King threw in something that should be glaringly obvious to everyone. Here's what he said: "ESPN has to take that eating contest off TV. With starvation in Africa on the news every week, it's a disgrace to show a bunch of idiots gorging themselves to nearly puking proportions."

What King is referring to is Nathan's Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest held in New York every 4th of July weekend. In case you haven't seen it, a bunch of people from a professional eater's club (seriously), wolf down as many hot dogs as they can in something like ten minutes. The current champion this year ate 49 hot dogs (bun and all). Last year he ate 53. It's disgusting and awe-inspiring at the same time.

But with all that's going on half a world away, I'm wondering just how desensitized we've become as a nation. How is it, the richest nation on earth, with the world's richest corporations (including ExxonMobil, which earned, oh, $7 BILLION last quarter alone by raping us on gas prices) can basically ignore something like a famine. It's 2005, not 1805. We have fat shits eating themselves out of their clothes daily hitting up McDonalds, 7Eleven or BK, gulping down 1,000 calorie+ Big Gulps and Big Macs. Yet people who so happen to have been born in a godforsaken desert are lucky if they can get a handful of rice in a day. We have no problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars invading a Middle Eastern country rich with oil, sending 2,000 of our brave troops to their death and countless others into lifelong despair (a study was released this week showing 30% of Iraq war vets suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other emotional maladies). Yet, we do nothing to make sure a few thousands people get a decent meal because they have, what I'm sure our elected criminals see as, nothing to offer us.

That, my friends, is how low we've sunk. Click here, if you want to do your part.