The Problem Is Miley Syriaus: What Has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

I was going to write a post about Miley Cyrus. I was going to criticize her for acting half her age while wearing half the clothing she should be. But then I saw that what she did was supposedly racist. I saw that Miley Cyrus was the new Imperial Wizard of the Crooklyn KKK. Biggie would just eat that one up (then again Biggie ate everything up). I heard that she had damaged black culture more than Nathan Bedford Forrest, Bull Connor, and David Duke combined. And then I said: “what?”

Are we as a nation really so convinced of our own need for racial tension that we need to accuse of a young girl of inciting racial hatred because she made her booty shake? The girl is friends with Wiz Khalifa. Is Wiz racist because he does most of the things she does, or at least supports them? No? Good. So maybe it’d be better off saying that it’s bad to play into negative stereotypes about your race, age, and sex instead of pretending Miley Cyrus is purposely appropriating black culture for her own sick monetary lusts. She’s just another kid caught up in the dynamo of sex, drugs, and hip-hop that has enveloped so much of our culture.

Or maybe we should be examining the Disney machine that created her that sucked her childhood out and stuffed her full of dreams of stardom and monetary success? Maybe we should stop trying to see things as racist and analyze what is wrong with our culture as a whole. Maybe shades of gray exist between black and white, shades that aren’t always as simple as “Miley can’t twerk” and “down with the Disney machine.” Maybe one day we’ll realize we’re all human beings, struggling in the same existence, mired in the filth of our own self-delusion.

I was going to write a post about Miley Cyrus and then I realized we had more important things to talk about, bigger fish to fry, tougher eggs to break. So then I figured I’d write about Syria. Oh, and then I had the epiphany that wars in the Middle East have gone so well in the past that we should totally get involved in another one.

But then I realized another thing, maybe the most important thing. Any dichotomy created between consciousness of Miley Cyrus’s butt-wangle and conscious of America’s Syrian shenanigans is a false one. Apples aren’t oranges. Miley isn’t Assad. And guess what? People can care about two things at once.