What is there to be confused about the declining interest in professional sports, Hollywood and the entertainment industry? It’s very obvious: you’ve alienated your audience.
I used to sit down in the early fall with my calendar and mark off all of the NFL games I cared about, every Sunday, Monday, Thursday and holiday game for the next five or six months, and my calendar was set around them. Seriously. And there were a lot of teams I loved to follow, so it was two or three days a week appointments for me that everything else had to flex around. (I actually left church early to make the noon games.)
I want to thank the entertainment industry, (because sports is really just another form of entertainment), for commandeering the social and media chatter for your liberal views. It forced me to do what I should have done a long time ago: reevaluate my priorities. When I was just being entertained, it didn’t seem to matter as much. The average American looks forward to pleasant distractions from the tedious mundane of work, responsibilities and various crises. I could unplug from whatever daily or weekly stresses around me, settle down with some friends and family, and watch some action packed football, or a movie, or listen to some music.
But when my entertainment began screaming and preaching at me with views and ideologies that countered my own, I was less entertained and more taken aback. I happen to love my country, while still hating its sins. I happen to love my God, while recognizing His human followers misrepresent Him at alarming rates. I love my Constitutional rights and don’t really want to abrogate them. I think being born in America gives me certain rights and privileges because its foundation established and guaranteed that. Men and women sacrificed comfort, health, money, careers and dreams; they bled and died to give me that. Those are kind of big deals to me.
I want to live out my convictions with freedom, insofar as they don’t infringe on yours. It is of utmost importance to me that my life reflects the tenets of my faith, that I live in such a way to bring honor to my God, that I can receive the reward of a child who has pleased her parent. This is what governs my life, or is what I try to govern my life.
And you came in with all your unrealistic, well, bullshit, and lauded it over your platforms. You disgraced the working Americans that pay your salaries because they buy your entertainment. You acted like you knew everything, and anyone who had different opinions or convictions than you were worthless, somehow beneath you…dare I say “deplorable”? A high school graduated NBA player had the audacity to call those who differ with him “uneducated.”[1] (And he did it with such poor grammar! How did he keep a straight face?? “…they “say things that’s uneducated”…(sic) That would be that ARE uneducated, LeBron. And the “people of Ohio wasn’t educated”…(sic again) That would be WEREN’T educated.)
And the media just keeps pandering this crap! It’s like they think the more they say their propaganda, the more we’re going to be inclined to believe it. Seriously, we generally don’t care what thugs think. Usually when thugs open their mouths, it reinforces our beliefs. Consider Michael Bennett’s crying wolf, I mean racism.[2] He was caught lying. There’s no honor in that. We don’t rush out to buy your jersey because you’re an imagined “victim” of a fabricated “crime”. In fact, we’re inclined to burn it. But the NFL awards it.[3]
You’ve used your platforms to further your insane, narcissistic agenda, and we just don’t want to watch anymore. We don’t believe you. We don’t agree with you. We don’t even really care. You’ve demonstrated everything we disagree with.
So your Emmys and your Grammys and your various “awards” (basically patting each other on the back), and your games, well, they’re less important to us now. Sure, I’ll watch a movie; I still like to be entertained. But I’ll wait until it’s on Netflix, or Amazon, or at the Redbox. I don’t need to line your pockets with the very thing that has inflated your ego and warped your thinking. And I’ll watch the games I want to watch, because I still like a good game. But I won’t buy your merchandise, or tickets to your stadiums, or anything else that reinforces your sacrilege of the convictions that guide my life.
But really, I’m grateful. It shook me out of my complacency, dare I say even some apathy. It caused me to ask myself how far I was going to absorb before I pushed back. It caused me to consider why I spend time and money on some things. It caused me to evaluate my convictions and if my life was accurately reflecting them. And I found I needed to change. I could use some improvement.
This country wasn’t built on people who absorbed the rantings of madmen because it was more comfortable and less costly not to address the fallacies. It was built on men and women who labored in town halls, in churches, in neighbor’s fields and homes, hammering out what a free nation would look like. These men and women worked in the fields, in the mercantile, and on the streets, and then worked some more when they were done. They forewent entertainment and luxuries, sleep and proper healthcare because the task before them was bigger than their personal matters. They took up arms when they had to, but preferred to take up pens and pulpits and lecterns and streets.
So the time freed up for me to do more honorable and noble things is invaluable. It matters. I found that my entertainment had become an idol. And the only thing an idol is good for is tearing down. It keeps one from the true God. So really, your belligerent insistence on forcing your woefully shortsighted ideas upon me actually woke me up.
And I would encourage all men and women everywhere, to consider the newfound freedom one can gain by turning off the voices of insanity, through the entertainment industry, the political machine, and especially a rogue media. Do an honest evaluation of your convictions and see if you’re living them. Make corrections where necessary. Make amends where appropriate. Look for healthier venues for your time, your money, your resources. Look for venues that reinforce your beliefs. Shop a small business instead of a chain. Support your local college sports instead of professional. Look for and find the voices you can align with, then align with them. Let those sources be the voices you listen to. Shut off the others.
A pretty simple yet brilliant idea to crowdfund the wall was reported here. Imagine the fundraisers we could do to help with this. Imagine getting politics out of the way, and the American people actually providing for and building our own border defense! There’s so much to do and be done, that there’s really no reason to waste our time on frivolous temper tantrums of a spoiled bunch of overpaid entertainment personalities.
Let the irrational somehow get the clue that there is a majority of American citizens with actual American interests at heart. We’re not ashamed of our heritage, but we’d like to fix some problems. We’re not ashamed of our God. We’re not ashamed of our President. We’re not apologizing for who we are, but we are quick to apologize for wrong actions we have done. May the entertainment industry continue to decline in its self-aggrandizing ceremonies, and may the noble citizens of America be self-effacing yet still diligent in preserving the integrity of the nation we love.
Footnotes:
[1] Lebron-james-trump-votes-sam-bowie-michael-jordan-blazers-draft-2017-9
[2] https://www.outkickthecoverage.com/michael-bennett-lying/
[3] Michael-bennett-is-seahawks-nominee-for-walter-payton-nfl-man-of-the-year-award/
