Thank-you Wanda Sykes!

I was in bed when the New Year rolled in. Staying up to watch faux sentimentality doled out by celebrities I've never heard of is not my thing. My kids got word that there was a big party in NYC and that a ball drops at midnight so we taped 10 minutes of NBC's New Year's eve show so they could see what it was all about.

Carson Daly was the host along with comic Wanda Sykes. In the brief minutes I watched, Sykes poked holes in the concocted spectacle with wise cracks about how in 1965 black people would have been dropped instead of the ball, America is so in debt that we will all have to move back in with our mothers, and the George Bush will air his own reality TV show with what he gathered from spying on Americans. Hyperbole? Sure. Refreshing? You bet! Daly was flummoxed and when the show returned from a commercial, Sykes was gone.

We live in a time with naked emperors on every corner yet we build entire cable networks on describing how fashionably dressed they are. When someone pierces the illusion, no matter how awkwardly, we should celebrate. Despite the interconnected digital world this blog celebrates, we are still mostly a captive audience in a mass mediated illusion. Let's hope that in 2006 journalists stoop being stenographers and citizens stop being sheep. The result will be chaos. But that is what democracy is all about.

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