The world is in chaos. There is war in the Middle East and Iran is gaining nuclear capability. American soldiers are dying while strange and violent weather events are ravaging the mid-west. Politicians are turning the once great seats of statesmanship and integrity into some sort of reality television circus as the real estate market is vanishing into swampland. Individual liberties are being confiscated and abused nationwide by governments and municipalities while rights are granted wholesale to individuals of illegal origin. And the most important issue of the last week in this world is that an aging and irrelevant radio personality has verbally insulted a young and irrelevant group of college students. The world is in chaos.

In almost half a century of life, I have been the recipient of lies, abuse, name-calling, hoodwinking, calumny, misrepresentation, denigration of character, chicanery and all kinds of cruelty. Most of the people of this world I would dare say have suffered in like manner. Oh well. Woe be we. But where was the media? Where was the “outrage”? And where o where were the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson? It seems that some colors are more optically important than others. One unkind remark in the fullness of time and space seems to have dominated the prism of all life on the planet. And I will now say what all others like me are thinking: Who cares?

For over a week I have been listening to and watching the most inane, unimportant and insignificant tripe concerning this aforementioned earth-shattering verbal insult and I found myself yearning for the days of the riveting Anna Nicole saga. The world is in chaos. The world is at war and Nancy Pelosi is two…well maybe one and a half heartbeats away from the Presidency…and the most important thing in the media for the last week or so concerns hair and hoes. Even Rome fell for more. Who is fiddling while this one burns?

I, along with the other 299, 999,999 people of this nation, have never heard Imus in the morning. Nor have I, along with the rest, been to Rutgers to see a basketball game. But since the twain has met, I feel I have been deprived of a necessary education. I do not remember covering this topic in my curriculum vitae. Somewhere between the Visigoths and American Idol, I must have dozed. I have been far too busy trying to make ends meet, pay my exorbitant taxes and raising my children to have noticed such a significant cultural development. Since when did sticks and stones supplant such things as genocide, infanticide, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, communism, socialism and crime?

Perhaps I am being too harsh because after all peoples feelings’ were hurt. This is important. This is news worthy. This is right up there with the American Revolution, the Inquisition and the Holocaust. I can see the future chapters of history texts now: Chapter 23- The Great American Insult—sandwiched somewhere between “Monica: The Downfall” and “Iran: The Armageddon”. While it is exciting to be living in the midst of such an historical event, I am nonetheless saddened. Other souls could boast of World Wars and scandals but I must content myself with having been alive during the “Age of Insults”. I will be able to tell my grandchildren that I was there in that epoch changing moment when some people got offended.

It only took the country a few short years to forget 9/11 and descend once again into complacency but I am not so sure we will be able to so quickly put this cultural rift behind us. Based on the media coverage and overall hysteria, this may just be that pivotal event that will finally make the proletariat rise up with fists clenched. We have accepted burdensome taxation without representation, loss of civil and personal liberties, the slaughter of the innocents, the injustice of illegal immigration and the complete collapse and bastardization of all three branches of government. But this is the unforgivable straw. Free speech has gone too far. The people are finally having their Howard Beal moment and Boston harbor may once again swell. Only this time with radios. The world is in chaos.