For real?

I work hard at being a loving and supportive husband. Sometimes that means doing things that you would not do on your own, because your spouse wants to do them. For some men that means an occassional chick flick. This week, that means watching the three-hour finale of the bachelor with my wife, and the last few episodes in the last couple of weeks.

For those of you have not watched the show or this season of the show, the finale was crazy. It was crazy because he asks a woman to marry him, and then in the "after the rose" ceremony he dumps the chick he asked to marry him and goes for a second chance with the second place girl in the contest.

First of all, I think Jason is a pussy. Not only do I think he is a wimp because he cries about four times every episode, I think he is a weak man because he lacks character. He is a weak man because he lacks discipline. Feelings are a gift from God, but feelings should not run a person's life. Especially a man's life. If you ask someone to marry you, you should be able to follow through with an engagement by at least with trying to make it work between Christmas and Valentine's day. And if you cannot make it work, you should at least have the decency to dump the woman in a private or semi-private place. Somewhere like a home or a dimly-lit Chinese restaurant, not on a national television show. And then to tell a production staff for a tv show before you tell the woman you asked to marry you? I watched this show, and I did not detect ill-will or arrogance, but what I did see was a pathetic, weak individual trying to masquerade as honorable, strong, and classy.

In his whole reality tv career, he is known as a whiner. He is a victim of his ex-wife who left him to raise his son on his own (like millions of other parents don't go through this every day). He issa victim of the bachelorette who did not choose him. Now he is a victim of choosing the wrong girl, and we are supposed to feel sorry for him there too. And then he begs for a second chance with the girl he dumped first. All good drama. All a perfect example of what is wrong with our country, and especially what is wrong with men in this country.

He keeps insisting that everything is "real". His actions were real. His feelings are real. He insists it is all very real. Being real is like being sincere. Does it matter if you are "keeping it real" if you are sincerely a punk? And do you really think that this show was not in many ways staged anyway? Regardless, part of being honest is being honest enough not to "write checks with your mouth that your rear end cannot cash".

As regular readers might have guessed, I am not only irritated with this Jason character, I am irritated with how he represents issues in broader culture. Specifically, how American's have become a nation of weaklings, especially our nation's men.

This weakness of Americans, and American men is evident in a number of ways. First of all, we come to adulthood with a sense of entitlement. American adults don't have this sense that they should have to work for anything anymore. There is no sense that we should have to struggle and scrimp to get ahead. Instead, we have a number of young adults that are overmortgaged with adjustable rate mortgages because they think they should have a house that "they deserve" by the time they are in their 20s. Not to mention 40,000 dollar cars and entertainment centers that run in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. Then when we have to start paying our bills that we cannot afford, we want the government to bail us out. This stuff just drives me nuts.

The same thing is true in family leadership. When did staying married and raising children become heroic in America, instead of simply the norm?

When did we develop this entitlement to be comfortable as a right?

I know...I am not expressing myself well. But I am shaking my head at how weak the character of America has become, especially American men.