Now I know why my father was

so tough on me when I was growing up. I used to think it was to make me

strong for the times of adversity I would face in my life. Or, maybe more

fitting, it was to keep me humble and honest during times of prosperity,

which seem to test our character to even a greater degree.

Yet, even more than those,

I now see clearly what my father was preparing me for in life. All the

little trials and tribulations I would endure as a kid were to prepare

me for these times, the Age of Stupid. Without that training, I would

surely go postal.

People are nuts. We are all

crazy in this country.

Imagine a world where a pudgy

guy who has no discernible talent except lying rises to the top of the

heap. He becomes infamous for being nude when he shouldn't be, only to

be loathed by half the population and revered by the other. Now, who is

he? The president, or the winner of "Survivor"?

Multimillionaire Madonna, who

has made her millions seducing MTV audiences her one and only fan base

has announced very loudly that she won't let her kids watch TV. She's

nuts. Easily, she gets "hypocrite of the year" award (Which

you have to work pretty hard to be a hypocrite when you don't have any

morals to begin with). I can just see Dennis Rodman saying, "Too

freaky for me."

We are all stupid today when

it comes to communicating. We use more technology than it took to walk

the first men on the moon, just to forward a joke that was not funny the

first time it was sent and won't be funny this time around either. We

use our cell phones to call our home phone's voice mail and our home phones

to call our cell phone's voice mail and our work phone's to call both

(We never call our work voice mail).

We sign onto the Internet to

send an e-mail in response to a cell phone voice mail message that we

were notified about on our pager. And this is all in response to a co-worker

who is sitting at a desk 15 feet away from us.

Be a celebrity and you own

the world; be a teacher you get sued. Be an athlete and do what you want;

be moral and you get mocked. Be rich, don't pay taxes, be lazy, get free

everything; be middle class and you pay the tab.

Normal is the biggest freak

in the world today. When did tolerance consume common sense? On any government

property today you can pass out condoms to 12-year-olds, make out with

your lesbian lover, distribute needles to heroin addicts, burn the flag,

or assist someone with their suicide and most likely no one will say a

word. Want to pray out loud? You might go to jail.

People are against the

death penalty for murderers, decided by 12 people, yet for one

person's right to abort an innocent unborn. Right now, some manicured

woman is putting on her hundred dollar leather pumps, sliding into the

leather bucket seats of her SUV to drive to a vegan luncheon that denounces

the laboratory use of animals that could very well save thousands of lives

someday, all the while stinking up the place with her $75-an-ounce perfume

from the industry that virtually perfected the science.

You can be stupid today and

become a millionaire. Spill coffee on yourself, trip over your shoes in

the grocery store, smoke a pack a day all your life and you have it made.

Just get a lawyer and you can get rich. If you are sensitive to your co-workers

odor, get on disability. Can't make it on your high school football team,

debate team or drama team? Sue your way to the top. Can't sing? Strip

your clothes off and start a punk band.

We are nuts. The rules haven't

just changed, they've caught the last train for the coast... the day,

the music died.

[Visit Billy Murphy on the

Internet at https://ebilly.net.]