Stoopits and the American Dream...

I was at work last night when one of my cashiers started to laugh. She was reading (usually a no-no, but business was really slow...) a new book, Sissy Nation (which sounds pretty cool and is something I think I want to read) so I asked her what was so funny. Well, she proceeded to read me two exerpts, which made me both laugh and wince. The first was basically how the author, John Strausbaugh, defines "sissy" and the second is about the term "Stoopits". Well, a nerve was hit, a button pushed, and I had to buy this book.

Having purchased said tome, let me quote for you the first 4 sentences of this book, and then you tell me if it doesn't strike home. Page 1, line 1:

America has become Sissy Nation. A culture of fat, soft, stupid, fearful, whiny, infantile, narcissistic, fatalistic, groupthinking victims. Once we were warriors. Now we're just worriers."

Strausbaugh goes on to state that by "sissies" he does not mean "girly man". Rather, he defines "sissy" as "...lack of courage and conviction, spine and balls". Later on in the first chapter, he writes "There's an episode of Star Trek where members of a mildly retaded alien race, let's call them the Stoopits, bumble around the galaxies in spaceships they can barely pilot, buying or stealing what they need from smarter species. I've always taken it as a metaphor for us. It won't be long now before American is Planet Stoopit."

That part about bumbling around in "spaceships they can barely pilot" immediately made me think about traffic in the fair Garden State. I would swear that the above description applies to a majority of the drivers on New Jersey's roads; they are piloting vehicles they can barely handle.

Ah well, like I said, I have purchased this book, so you, gentle reader, can expect a number of quotes drawn from said book that will serve as my starting points over the next few weeks (months?). When you think about Stoopits, we can start by thinking about l'affaire Spitzer and then yesterday's bailout of one of Wall Streets largest brokerages, Bear Stearns. *sigh*