I've Seen the Light

After years without television, I've now been watching it for much of the summer. Among the many epiphanies it's given me:

• Despise the poor. When they're not dirty, they're stupid. When they're not stupid, they're lazy. When they're not lazy, they're ugly. When they're not ugly—ah, but they're always ugly. And their primary purpose in society is to be laughed at, berated, or simply locked up. 
• Distrust anyone with an accent unlike Jennifer Aniston's or George Clooney's.
• Wealth is a sure sign of good character. The wealthy should be worshipped; the truest form of worship is imitation.
• Anyone devoting his or her life to public service is a misguided, idealistic fool.
• Anger is more effective than empathy.
• Men are stupider than women.
• If someone isn't listening, talk louder. If talking louder doesn't work, shout. If shouting doesn't work, resort to violence. After all, most serious problems are solved with violence. And the violent good—something you might think of as oxymoron—always win.
• We envy those we pretend to mock.
• We always get what we deserve.
• Every American's ultimate ambition is to be talked about by four or five middle-aged women who are all speaking to each other at the same time.
• Twelve is the new seventeen.
• President Obama is shady. At best.
• The music video is dead.
• Turn to news sources owned by billionaires for an objective explanation of everything.
• Most of what happens to us can be explained by our childhood.
• Most white American families are happy and have little dirty laundry, both literally and figuratively.
• The proper response to an opposing point of view is to treat it with contempt.
• In our American democracy, the government is something other than ourselves.
• All Asians are either gymnastic assassins or brilliant (but ultimately second-tier) scientists.
• The longer the hair, the deeper the depravity.
• Living on credit is the shortest route to happiness.
• Despite that fact that they possess almost nothing, have no money and essentially no power, the poor—especially the foreign and the immigrant poor—are at the root of all the problems in the world.
• All news is bad news. It's extremely important to be aware of all this bad news, especially the bad news you can do nothing about. Why? Because your sense of helplessness is a form of love—maybe the only kind of love we have left.