In neurology it is said that the effects of fetal hypoxia manifest in adolescence and the effects of neurotoxic substance abuse in young adulthood manifest in early middle age. Imus is 62, so is America, sort of middle aged. The brain is a sort of battery that is prone to discharge, as in epilepsy. But behavior is shaped by inhibition. Small inhibitory neurons shape behavior by permitting certain signals to pass and sculpting out most of the others. For this notion of "inhibitory sculpting" Sir John Eccles got the Nobel Prize in science and medicine. But inhibitory cells are the most vulnerable to "insult," hence post-traumatic seizures.

Imus was a high dose substance abuser in his younger years and it is now beginning to show. He loses control of his mouth, thus exhibiting more his crotchety old man traits than any real feelings. His apologies thus mean nothing because for over a decade his literally "brain damage" personality is beyond his control.

But more important is the fact that America is aging, just like Imus. And, just like Imus suffers from past substance abuse. As a nation, we needed to be "high on America" for quite a while. So we did everything big, but without paying for it, passing on the bill to our kids. Now comes pay back time. It all started with 9/11, when all we did to keep our oil imports cheap (so cheap that we destroyed our domestic oil industry) and our SUVs full, came back at us in the form of hateful suicide mass murder. The look on GW Bush's face-- that "tilt" stare blankly into space-- when told of the acts of terror, was pretty much that of the nation. Then, the decisions America made, after finishing with all the pretty pre-canned speeches, were characteristic of the middle aged brain damaged by years of substance abuse (cocaine and alcohol in his case, oil in America's).

As rage swept over the land, aging America realized that it didn't have much of an army to go to war with. So it used forces almost 50% thirty somethings, moms and dads who expected only to be called up to fight fires, floods and race riots. LBJ had wisely realized that such people could not cope with the rages of jungle warfare, so all through the Vietnam War he never mobilized the Reserves and National Guard-- neither did Nixon. But Bush was probably the most substance abuse brain damaged of the whole Administration and so he reacted with utter abandon. Now our soldiers in Iraq are on average five years older than those in Vietnam; the dead almost always leave behind widows and orphans, but Bush doesn't care. He's got to be tough because he's the "decider." Meanwhile, suffering from the "ain't my kid going to Iraq" disconnect syndrome, the aging American population cheered on the president who would have them eat their cake and have it too, instituting a policy of "preemption" with abandon, while calling on the public to respond to 9/11 by shopping until they drop. To further show that it is "O.K." to be so disconnected, he cut taxes while escalating war. Perhaps someone around Bush remembered that the only time public opinion rose against the Vietnam War was in 1967 when LBJ instituted a 10% surcharge on income tax.

Bush has a life history of fear of responsibility. So his "poppy" arranged for someone else to make decisions and take the heat. That was supposed to be the role of Rumsfeld and Cheney. But, like all spoiled brats-- especially those with substance abuse histories-- he suffers from an erratic vanity and wants to SEEM as if in charge. This in sum is the Bush psycho-dialectic.

Normally, Bush would have been discovered and humiliated in public. But America is like Bush: middle age and desperate to seize a last chance at seeming to have achieved something manly. In an effort to keep up with their heroic illusion of themselves, today's Americans seized anything from "salvation" by having "discovered" Jesus to ostentatious wealth display. But. men especially, that manifest their "things" as if their God-given plumage, reach a middle age crisis where they realize that either they never had really been nakedly "manly" or were losing it fast. And so, as they swallow down Viagra with a double whiskey and a beer chaser, they are drawn like moths to fire by the pornography industry as spark to mirages of romantic conquest when advancing on the plump bent-over old lady, should they be unable to trade her in for a newer model.

And still, a deep desire for a feeling of manliness for the last time before they die burns incandescently in their bosoms. If substance abusers like Bush, they start wars and feel soooo manly in their stubborn holding out in the face of utter defeat because of their own incompetence. If weasels like Rove, they feel great pride in their deception of the masses, like a larcenous snow fox steeling incubating eggs from penguins. But most Americans are like Imus, "manly" with their mouth, daring to say in public what most other mere humans would dare say only when dead drunk. But in fact, there is no difference in the way "Imus" acted up on the air, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld acted-up giving orders and lying to justify themselves to the public, and the way financial "advisers" steal dumb investors' money to plume themselves in glittering "things."

Peace-time generals, who served as grunts in the last war, get to feel manly recklessly fulfilling Rumsfeld's orders, getting boys killed trying to use firepower as a substitute for the non-existing voluntary manpower needed. They are called "star whores" by people who wonder how it is that unlike generals like Westmoreland, Abrams and Powell, they are not called to account for casualties, civilian and military. Instead, they needed only stand next to Rummy the boss at press conferences with that fawning look (down, for Rummy is short) in their eyes-- at the Pentagon that's called "parrot on the shoulder."

The tragedy is that physics always gets in the way of the tall tales of old farts. Flatfooted marines who never heard a gun go off in all their 365 days in Vietnam serving as clerks are throwing "dynamite quotes" around as if fireworks on the 4th of July, speaking "vet to vet" without one word of empathy for the victims of repeated concussion brain injury from pointlessly ridding around through Iraq and Afghanistan in vulnerable Humvees that get hit by improvised explosive devices. To these old vets, all that is unfortunate "fog of war" and the devastated wives and kids that will have to take care of these Iraq casualties are nothing but part of the "America that must bear the burden of bringing democracy to the Middle East." Why the Middle East? Who can say, when the same people who say we must fight there are demanding that we end our dependency on Mideast oil. Perhaps there are other motives. Like what?

Like the manliness thing for a cabal of men who have a life long history of chasing manhood while avoiding the dangers of military adventures; but, due to congenital factors of physical appearance they could never achieve that status. So they go around calling for "World War IV." It is interesting that a lot of these endless war advocates never seized their opportunity to volunteer. But even if they had, there are no uniforms available to fit their pear shape or scrawny diminutive look. And so they fight with words in print at elaborate "think tanks" where they give themselves academic-sounding titles of expertise when they might barely qualify to enter academic institutions as students, not faculty.

Such people mold our current culture of "virtual manliness" on bombastic blogs consisting of wings- flapping eagles with a waving American flags in their beaks, as if run by birdbrains. So a giant of military "strategy," for example, is a diminutive, not bald eagle, but bald midget, who barks as if a marine DI should he not like a submitted post. Or, the savant in military strategy who responds to our troops crossing from Kuwait into Iraq: Now I no longer feel like the scrawny Jewish kid getting beat up in the school yard by the big Swartzas.

In fact, Imus is a mouth-fighter, like all the other odd shaped "males" in his entourage. They never amounted to much until they called for: all pudgy irrelevant to unite. And once united what did they do? Well, it was all as if verbal and virtual sex. And since in the brainstem the region for sex and the region for violence are closely linked in the male of the species, they went from talking dirty to talking tough to talking violent. And so "talk" radio of nasty old men was born.

One of the things I noticed when I first came to America is that, despite the tradition of "fighting fair" brought from root European cultures, fighting here was always many against one. And as that one falls in a pool of pain and bruises, each feels like he downed the opponent himself; it is VICARIOUS heroism. And when, as old farts, they see on TV, US soldiers, wrapped in armor to look like spacemen, ramming open the doors of homes in Iraq and Afghanistan and thrashing the houses, they cheer, vicariously feeling a sense of manhood: take that, you filthy Islamofascists, for 9/11, as trained to do by neocon propaganda. That sense drives them to maneuver their wheelchair to the phone stand to call Bill O'Reilly or Imus as if to say: "play it again Sam...bartender, give me another drink."

But when the real warriors come home and ask for a job, a home, a school for their kids, tuition for college, help with getting "things" too, and above all medical care, the answer is: hey, you ain't getting mine buddy." I recall going to a meeting of vets to discuss how to supplement medical care for brain injured Iraq-Afghan vets that live far from VA Hospitals. But after tough talk about themselves, all these old vets could discuss is that there's no good care for their diabetes, lung cancer from smoking and erectile dysfunction at the VA!

So, stepping back and reviewing the landscape, I can understand why Imus was knocked off the air. Had he been allowed to stay, he would have been as much a glaring proof of substance abuse brain damaged America of the 60s turned abusively gaga as GW Bush is, seen as leader of a declining pariah nation in the world. So get Imus off the air, get even Limbaugh off the air; that way the rest of us won't have to look in the mirror for another few years as we search for who is responsible for the decline and fall of America.

It can't be us guys, because we thought we had a "goin' problem" and it turned out to be a "growin' problem." Soooo, Mr. and Mrs. America, put on your geriatric diapers next summer and go watch the Bush-Rove victory parade as our boys come home "victorious" from the surge after "showin' dem Aarabs that you can't fool with America."

America has the world's most wonderful democratic institutions. But these are made for a young vibrant population trying to live by the standards inculcated in it at home. Degenerate religious leaders, war industry kick-back crooks, and a totally bravado pair of president and vice president frauds that even their wives can't stand, serving the interests of the leaky geriatric America of the 60s that can only remember the sex and drugs of its era, not the idealism, can lead us nowhere else but to the erectile dysfunction decline and fall of the American Empire.

It is only when we each deem all our soldiers as OUR kids and do not allow to be done to them what we would not allow to be done to our biologic kids (and grand-kids) that we stand a chance at recovery. Our Iraq surge is as fraudulent as the erectile surge the TV ads promise. So if you can't get it up, don't curse the young girls for their youth. Just think about leaving something worthwhile for them to remember you by.

This is dedicated to Luka and Noah, my second generation American grandchildren, one born, the other soon to come, who deserve more of an America like that which Bush, Cheney, Rove and Imus inherited from our parents.

Daniel E. Teodoru

Television’s misrepresentations of cultures are not advantageous to our progressive society. Generation after generation continues the fight against discrimination and stereotyping; communities such as Gay and African Americans often lead this battle. However, their efforts tend to be taken for granted and overlooked by network television. Examples of this blatant stereotyping might include shows such as Will and Grace, Good Times, and Sanford and Son. Hopefully, the average person doesn’t feed into these stereotypical traits of the Gay and African American communities, but these shows surely don’t help the cause. Entertainment has a long way to go in order to catch up to a progressive America that is more interested in enlightened entertainment, than old clichéd story lines. Unfortunately, the CW network chooses not to take the direction that the rest of America is moving in. Now, they are taking aim at the payday loan industry with their new show “Easy Money,” premiering on Sunday, October 5. If this show should gain as much popularity as the previous mentioned, society may acquire a distorted view of a legitimate business model. The American people might even take on the idea that the heads of payday loan stores are “loan sharks,” which is what they are called in the Easy Money trailers. These thoughts could potentially lead to passing irrational measures such as Ohio’s HB 545, which would drive payday lenders out of the state and bring about devastating ramifications. This just goes to show that we shouldn’t rely on Hollywood to learn about the world around us.

Post Courtesy of Personal Money Store
Professional Blogging Team
Feed Back: 1-866-641-3406

The media’s rendering of society that doesn't fit the pattern of the status quo are not advantageous to our progressive culture. Over the past few generations, communities such as Gays and African Americans have battled for the equal treatment that the rest of us take for granted, only to see their hard work let down by stereotype-promoting dramas and situation comedies. Thanks to wildly-popular shows such as Good Times, Sanford and Son, and Will and Grace, most of us would find it difficult to encounter an average person on the street who does not consider at least most of the qualities of Fred Sanford or Jack McFarland to be true of all African Americans or gays, correspondingly. Surely, while our society has made great strides in its tolerance of people from all walks of life, our media still has some progress to be made. Case and point: the writers of a new CW television program, “Easy Money” have their next target in view; payday loan companies. If the show, which premiered on Sunday, October 5, gains popularity as Sanford and Son and Will and Grace did, the possibility is very real for society to obtain a erroneous depiction of a legitimate business model. Our society could get an fictitious idea about the people who run payday loan stores, called “loan sharks” in Easy Money’s trailers. This, in turn, could lead to unreasonable actions such as Ohio’s HB 545, which would cast payday lenders out of the state and bring about disturbing consequences. This just provides additional evidence that we can’t turn to the media to learn about the world around us.

Post Courtesy of Personal Money Store
Professional Blogging Team
Feed Back: 1-866-641-3406
Home: Link
Blog: Link