Obeying the voices in our heads

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It's a fact that popular culture -- the boob tube, music, movies, celebrity worship -- drive and shape our larger Western culture.

TV gets into our brains -- puts ideas in there -- and our brains begin to think different things.

Movies tell us stories, and we respond to them, and our beliefs shift.

Music goes to our minds and our hearts, and it affects what we think and what we believe.

One way or the other.

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WHAT COULD go wrong?

What could go wrong with a culture that takes its cues from popular entertainment -- from Hollywood, from the music industry, from the celebrity biz -- when lots of those faces on the screen and voices in your iPod belong to people who are out of their f***ing minds?

Really, what could happen?

All right, let me take this tack . . . what can we learn from this?

I'll start. I'll tell you what I've learned from Charlie Sheen today.

I've learned that this is 42:38 of my life that I can never, ever get back. If you want to waste nearly 43 minutes of yours, that's your own affair. You've been warned.