The trends of today, probably because of the connectedness of the world via the internet, and what I believe to be the the Kingdom of God making its way throughout the earth, are to think of others and put them before yourself.  This has been explored by various types of social, media, and entertainment mediums such as U2, Nickelback, Linkin Park, The Disney Channel, Fox news, the NFL and the NBA, CNN, George Clooney,American Idol, and slowly but surely, the church.
One of the things I briefly mentioned in this post about the VMA’s and more specifically, MTV, was their coming irrelevance if they don’t change their ways.  In a world of less selfishness and more love, MTV has become a symbol of a me-first mentality that started in the 2nd half of the 20th century and finally ended as the focal point of a generation (though it certainly still continues) at the end of the same century.

Sorry MTV, a cable channel that focuses on reality shows where the whole point is to see girls in bikinis and shirtless guys trying to tempt them into cheating on their significant others are no longer of interest to a new generation that wants to see something real and loving.  Perhaps its time to…

once again be a channel about music?

My Hero during the MTV Awards – Jordin Sparks

A few weeks ago I taped the Espy awards (the ESPN awards for sports) and watched it in its entirety.  Justin Timberlake hosted the show, and throughout the whole thing showed class, made fun of people in good taste, and along with Will Farrell made me laugh my head off.  It was honestly fun too watch and made me want to tune in next year.

Fast Forward to this last weekend, when I once again taped another awards ceremony from MTV, the Video Music Awards, where MTV gave us the supposed best of this last years videos.  What we actually got as viewers was a pile of crap, and more reason to believe that MTV actually believes the next generation is a bunch of sex-crazed animals who don’t think for themselves.  This was not true of my generation, and this is not true of this one.

Russell Brand, a British lad, hosted this years ceremony and the best thing he said all night was, “I know you have no clue who I am…”  It’s true, and I wouldn’t care if I ever saw him again.  He used and abused his platform to do things like, oh, talk the whole time about sex and masturbation (a concept which seems to be an obsession with him), made fun of the Jonas Brothers who have a promise to remain virgins until marriage, and disrespect President Bush (and about 50% of our country) and tell everyone watching to vote for Obama. 

As readers of my site know, I have a very neutral opinion on politics, and I will be voting, but this plea from a person who doesn’t live here was as ludicrous as a pastor who decides they have the right to disrespect president Clinton from the pulpit.  Except that this was on a much larger scale. 
But it shouldn’t surprise me I guess, for a quick view of who Russell Brand is and what he has done on wikipedia was quite enlightening and sheds light on the kind of people MTV believes should be influencing us.

After all was said and done, towards the end of the show, Jordin Sparks tooks the stage with John Legend to present an award and made a hero of herself for going inpromptu on MTV and saying:

“I have just one thing to say about promise rings, it’s not bad to wear a promise ring, because not everybody, guy or girl wants to be a slut…” 

I’ll close this post that could actually be a lot longer with one more comment. The interesting thing about MTV over the last 20 years is that they are no longer the underdog.  They have a substantial audience and people view their television station (though their numbers are quickly fading as they are becoming more irrelevant in this day and age) as a part of popular culture.  The new underdogs are those who will take a stand to do what they think the right thing for them to do is.  For the Jonas Brothers and for Jordin Sparks, the right thing is to stay pure, because they have felt led to make not only a statement with words, but a statement with their entire lives.  This is a statement of character that is foreign to people like Brand, who say a lot, and do very little to make our world any better. 

This is, oddly enough, one of the reasons he curses our president.