Electric Monkey Pants

I happened to read this story about rich girls’ Sweet 16 parties in a month-old copy of Time.

The protagonists’ excesses alone make for lurid, enjoyably outraged viewing. (Surely one celebrant’s decision to dye her poodles pink should have prompted a call to the A.S.P.C.A.) A precocious celebutant makes her entrance via helicopter. A self-proclaimed “divo” (like diva but different) rents out the mall to stage a faux fashion show (prompting a backstage catfight over a limited supply of bustiers). There are hired dancers, a raj-like litter hoisted by hand-picked hotties and an apparent contractual obligation for someone to arrive in a stretch Hummer. I had no idea so many stretch Hummers even existed. No wonder we had to go to war in Iraq.

The series is like an infomercial for class war, and should the revolution come, an episode guide will provide a handy, illustrated list of who should go up against the wall. My Super Sweet 16 had its third-season premiere last week, building up to the broadcast with a drumroll of conspicuous consumption: four two-hour blocks of episodes drawn from the show’s previous seasons. To witness such unself-conscious acquisitiveness in one sitting is like eating an entire normal-kid birthday-party sheet cake, wax decorative candles and all. There’s the same queasy sense of monochromatic excess because all the shows are alike, from the fake panic that the party may not happen to the scary-sexy dry humping on the dance floor. And no matter what the nominal theme of the party–California beach party, Moulin Rouge, the color pink–each guest of honor is really after only one thing. “I feel famous. I love it,” says one. Another: “I definitely felt like I was famous.” Yet one more: “I felt like such a star.” The teenagers take on all the tics of fame, from tiny dogs to referring to oneself in the third person. We are all Paris Hilton now.

Not all of us, Ana. Not all of us by a long shot.

The pure god-awful greed and selfishness of these teens (and their feel-guilty-about-working-too-much parents) is appalling and disgusting.

You know, rich people and Republicans often accuse people of “waging class warfare” if somebody dares to point out how excessive and venal the rich act, especially their children. That’s such a bullshit argument. It’s the rich who are waging class warfare, not the poor. The rich are the ones who create poverty (it’s called “not sharing” to the Nth degree) by exploiting workers, keeping minimum wage low generally structuring society and government so that it enriches themselves instead of everybody else. Those of us who are in the middle class should feel lucky we live in such a great country, I suppose, but it’s really just a comfy version of poverty compared with the awesome wealth of the upper class. I mean, they can buy lear jets. Fucking lear jets, man. That costs more just to maintain in a year than most of us make the whole year.

So if anybody ever accuses you of waging class warfare by pointing out how selfish and nihilistic the rich kids are behaving, tell them to fuck off and get a clue. The rich are the ones who start all of our wars, figurative or otherwise. Not us peasants. We have no power as they like to point out when we try to change things (otherwise, politicians love to assure us that we have the power. Is that why so many of us are working for minimum wage?).

Well fuck Paris Hilton, that shrewish demon slut. We all know how vacuous the rich girls are now. They’ve been spoiled rotten by the money they never earned, so in a way I’m not jealous of them at all. But it would be nice to have a huge stash of resources to fall back on when times got tough. I’d like to have a house by a lake or river or ocean. But if acting like spoiled little shits is the price, I’ll take poverty, thanks. I guess even being rich isn’t free.

MTV is such a filthstream of elitist fascism and meta-satanic imagery that I doubt I could ever watch this show for more than 5 minutes. This is how Satan would raise his daughters; so spoiled you can smell her a million miles away. Obviously, the show is fake and staged, but the bullgod-worshipping creditcard-celebrity is real. Just buy happiness, kids!

My parents used to dislike MTV because it had suggestive videos and weird music. Now I hate MTV because it has corporate fascism, wealth-worshipping depraved materialism and shitty, shitty music, when it has music at all, which is during commercials.

I can only assume that the devil himself is the guy running MTV. It’s that bad. I’d rather watch the pope take a shit for 12 hours than watch a half hour of MTV. I’d watch the pope thing even if it had praying and a toilet-cam. Now that’s fucking gross, right? That’s how bad MTV’s sex-obsessed materialism grosses me out. It actually makes me feel ill. And not Beastie Boys ill; the bad kind.

//||baaarrrfff!!||\
Reasons why I don’t have a TV, number 3143.

I guess you could ask why I get so upset over materialism and flagrant displays of sickening money-flaunting. Honestly, I don’t know. I guess I’m just a spiritual person and so materialism seems like the enemy to me. Especially given my Gnostic outlook.

The weirdist thing to me, though, is the fact that the poor kids will watch these shows religiously. And that’s their fault. If you’re stupid enough to watch eMpTV, then you deserve to feel bad about yourself. Hell, that’s the whole point of MTV.

So why the fuck do they watch it? Cheap thrills, I suppose. Now turn the channel before I vomit.