I’m basically defining wankfest here as exponentially overblown sensationalism ad nauseum, I guess.
It just makes me wonder, when I see the way the media, and in turn, the populace, in America seize an particularly uninteresting and utterly inconsequential piece of news/information/whatever and just jerk it off until it’s chafed, if that’s the way things are everywhere else in the world. In America, everything that can be spoken about for more than 6 seconds is spoken about for 6 months. Roger Clemens’ trial is a perfect example of this. Most people at least know the guy is facing 30 years in prison. My contention is nothing relative to ‘is that just?’ Or not, my contention is: who fucking cares?
I’ve seen a story about a priest banging a broad make headlines for a week straight. It literally made no impact on other 8.7 million people in New York, but for some reason it was decided that was appropriately wankable. And anything that is decided to be appropriately wankable in America always is. Even if a piece of news IS mildly compelling, it certainly loses it’s luster if we hear about it 763 times a day.
That, I suppose, brings me to my question: is that a uniquely American social dynamic? Admittedly, my scope is extremely limited, but speaking in terms of what I am familiar with, that sort of seems to be the case. If some of the straight up puzzling roster/personnel moves that are made in European Soccer were to happen in Major League Baseball, for example, I wouldn’t be able to watch espn for 32 seconds without vomiting. But no one really seems to talk about that ‘controversy,’ let alone the rampant corruption.
Silvio Berlusconi could never be an American politician, not because of anything ethical, but because everyone’s heads would explode from talking about him all of the time. Again, I have never been anywhere else, so my perspective on international wankfest is limited. I’m not making any suppositions, I’m more curious than anything.
