Gap

Sometimes I see parallels in the universe.

Take the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor versus the ever-widening gap between good TV and bad TV.

The first gap has been well-documented by people much more educated on the subject than me. I just assume it's happening. Actually I suppose I feel it happening as, though I do not live at the poverty level, I do not know if I will ever see a house, a new car, retirement savings and cannot imagine how people get there.

Well I guess I can tell you becoming an alcoholic at the age of 22 and then getting fired from lots of jobs due to your undiagnosed and untreated ADD isn't necessarily the best avenue...

But I digress.

I noticed the second gap more recently. This week I enjoyed both a program on Frontline about soldiers suffering PTSD brought on by the war in Iraq (also read a good article on PTSD in women soldiers in Iraq recently in the NY Times Sunday Magazine.) One of those soldiers hung himself and if you were to watch his father tell you about what it was like to find his son hanging there, and to "rub the only warm place on him" even though he knew his son was dead, while calling his name, and remarking how that son finally looked at peace, you would be deeply moved.

You might be moved as well by the other program I watched this week, that being the latest installment of America's Next Top Model, where a bunch of skinny chicks (plus a couple of "plus-sized" ones) "posed" their way through a series of lasers while being judged by a skinny effete African-American man dressed in a yellow catsuit with black man panties.