Bimbo

Last week, a famous drug-addicted woman killed herself in a Florida hotel. She was a woman with an 8th grade education from humble beginnings in The South. She married an ancient man in his 80s when she was in her 20s. He was an oil baron. Subsequently, when he died, she wrangled in court battles over the man's estate with his surviving relations. She managed to buy her way into celebrity, since she had no education and no ostensible talent, other than her shameless exhibitionism of her surgically modified body. She even had her own TV show. She could have used her money to educate herself, to find the help she needed to control her addiction, to share what she might have learned with others. Instead, she chose to feed her addiction to attention and drugs. She managed to give birth to two children. One has already killed himself. The other, an orphaned infant, survives her. Posthumously, she received even more attention than she did when she was alive from people apparently fascinated by her useless and self-indulgent life. Perhaps this story is a barometer of the times. Rather than craving liberation from stupidity and dysfunction, many, it seems, now seek validation of those traits in themselves. This can only mean that there is a sickness in this society which might be healed by more vigorous efforts to educate and rehabilitate. However, the government obsesses on war abroad and horror of global warming, seen as a threat to the high-tech toys of today's wealthy. Man's social and intellectual evolution is at a low ebb. One can only hope that the tide will soon reverse.