The United States of Anxiety

National Report ^ | December 21, 2012 | Kevin D. Williamson

[Steelfish]

DECEMBER 21, 2014 The United States of Anxiety Sony brass might be cotton candy, but they are iron men compared with the American college student. By Kevin D. Williamson

In ten days about 1 million Americans will be gathered in Times Square waiting for a ball to drop, a strange spectacle indeed for a country that seems to be waiting on both of them.

If 2014 had a grand theme, it was testicular absence.

In science fiction, corporations are deathless juggernauts imposing their will on governments and galaxies, but in the real world Sony, one of the most powerful business entities in the world, got cowed into submission by the release of some embarrassing e-mails and threats from hackers acting on behalf of the Evil Kingdom of the Hermit Midgets.

Hollywood is forever congratulating itself on its courage for banging on, e.g., the American suburban bourgeoisie, because bourgeois American suburbanites don’t generally resolve disagreements by sawing off heads. But let Kim Jung-un take offense at your dopey Seth Rogen movie and Sony is suddenly a wounded kitten.

You think the Weyland-Yutani Corporation would put up with that nonsense? James Franco and Seth Rogen and the Sony brass might be man-shaped objects carved out of cotton candy, but they are iron men compared with the American college student. Students at the University of California at Irvine felt the need to avail themselves of the services of grief therapists after the grand jury decided not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for a shooting in Ferguson, Mo., some 1,800 miles away.

[Excellence]

Oh, the humanities.

That right there is funny.

[Sequoyah101]

Pretty scathing of testicular fortitude but I do feel like the life we / I lead is like being in a flight simulator where they are throwing problems at you to see if they can make you crash and burn.

It is some kind of threat or challenge, planned or unplanned every single day. The factors stacked in the deck against our successful passage are almost without number. We don’t have good days, only a few days that don’t suck.