meet the metaphor--how ugly is pop culture

If there is one icon that signifies the abhorrent decline of the consensual US culture at the beginning of 2005 it has to be ashley simpson. Over the decades we have had our signifiers that represented the hideousness of US consciousness, but none so banal, twisted, vile, and just plain awful as this one. What makes it all the more mindnumbing is the sucking down of the media in its manifestation of this truly bad singer and so called songwriter. She really represents every aspect of what is wrong with this nation.

She is a product of greed and the dark manipulation of pop culture by corporate media. Created from the almost literal rib of her sister, who has more than a modicum of minor talent, ashley engages in this greed fest knowing full well that it is all about the dollar and nothing whatsoever else. She is enron and worldcom and those who voted for Bush all rolled into one symbolic referent for the insanity that makes us wonder if humans can even begin to survive until 2012. Lakoff was right, of course. He need only begin to deconstruct all that is ashley simpson to identify the intentionality of those who wish to control and increase their wealth in the most expedient and unconscienable ways. That they pretend to not know how terrible she is--in every possible way, musically, visually, intellectually, viscerally--is emblematic of the same behaviors of their fellow travelling brothers and sisters in the FoxNews and other conservative based and controlled political media. Ashley is no different than BRush or O'Really and Handjog and the rest of that ilk. She is the dark sister of Ann Coulter and the white version of Malkin, placed in a bubble of celebrity only to generate revenue while undercutting and destroying the independent and revolutionary efforts of true female artists out there trying to make a difference.

If we continue to allow this icon to emerge from the formula coccoon matrix, we are all culpable in the pushing forward of the ruin of the US and most of what was decent and beneficent in this world.