American Idiot

On slow nights (we unemployed have a few) I've watched Wife Swap. It's this over-the-top reality show that doesn't just press the offensive button, it leans on it for 54 minutes once a week.

One episode had a white supremacist family swapping moms with an African American family. There's been a lot of so-rural-we-say-shucks families mixing it up with city slickers. And Wife Swap has done the Pagan-Punk-Rocker Mom vs. the Bible-thumping-hillbilly family to DEATH.



Now, weirdly, America is offended by the latest installment. (This after several seasons of offensive?!!!) Yes, the lethargic ire of white trash America has been roused by a Brit Twit in San Francisco, a city that's actively cultivated snobbery since about 1979.

Apparently what's got everybody's Wall-Mart undies in a twist is the fact that the twit was A) un-apologetically rude, B) brazenly proud of his (apparently upper) class and C) he's a foreigner, dagnabit!

So after multiple seasons of paranoid, controlling, psychotic husbands forbidding their families to watch 'sinful TV', dine in restaurants that serve 'murdered animals' or fail to clean their rooms ala boot camp style with a toothbrush -- they're upset because some Brit Twit talked trash about ATVs?!

I wonder how much of this ire is about the Twit verbally lashing out at the redneck wife and hurting her feelings vs. his attack on 'Merkica and the slothful, stupid pastimes so heavily promoted in some parts of the country (Missouri, anyone?).

ATVs are stupid and they do promote laziness, just like the American car or SUV. And paintball is great if you live in a trailer in Tennessee and you've run out of cows to tip, but promoting it as a way to get your gap-toothed spawn into college? PA-LEASSSE!

The Twit is right if it only takes some Toff asshat like him to get under America's skin. We are inbred, stupid and lazy if that's all it takes.