The Curse of the Lottery

The other day, I was watching the E! channel (yeah, I watch this wonderful channel sometimes when I’m sick) and the THS (True Holywood Story) program was on and the topic was The Curse of the Lottery, which was about regular folks who won the lottery and their lives (rather contorted) after that.

The title of the program just gives it away… those people who won the lottery went crazy spending all the money and quickly went back to having nothing. Aaaannnddd, it’s a curse that some-invisible-body put on those people and caused them to spend all their money! How non-sensical is that?

I perfectly understand that people can make bad financial decisions and go wild with so much money, BUT it’s their own doing, nobody forced them to do so, nobody was cursed to so such thing. Most of the time people don’t know any better, financially speaking, and think that the money will last forever… I feel sorry for them, but it’s their responsibility to manage their money wisely (or not, if they so wish) and not blame the curse for their wrongdoing. I’m pretty sure that the winners themselves don’t blame any curse for their lost money, but the media did and I just think that’s irresponsible and annoying.

The whole country is pointing the blaming finger at somebody else, whether is the war, the deficit, the obesity crisis, the educational system and so on, that we don’t need another display of irresponsible behavior being glamourized by the media. But, I know, that’s business as usual… This program really got me thinking about this growing inconsequential attitude and irresponsible (and quite arrogant) behavior I see often on TV and on the streets. Just think about Cops and Judgy Judy!

What happened to those nice and responsible Americans? Vanished? It just worries me that we have gone from picture perferct to a twisted one in a short period of time… and things are likely to continue getting stranger and stranger…