What’s really important right now

So…..one of the more buzzworthy events that have been getting a lot of attention right now is Miley’s Cyrus’ latest performance at the Video Music Awards (“VMA’s”) last weekend. 

I didn’t see it myself – I hate award shows in general – but I’ve read a lot of interesting criticism about it - such as this article highlighting the racist (as well as sexist) implications that the performance had….which makes it sound like missing it was a good thing to do.  The essential argument is that the performance reinforces a lot of negative stereotypes that nobody at the VMA’s (or society at large) seemed have a problem with while they were coming up with it….which they really should have. 

But then I read the following Facebook post from a friend of mine who argued a different point of view: 

“Dear Everyone,
Please stop talking about Miley Cyrus. MTV has been getting attention (money) by doing outrageous, vulgar things for a couple decades now, and they're getting a lot of attention (money) from everyone telling everyone how bad it was. If you really want performances like that to stop, shut up about it. You are not perceptive or clever for pointing out how bad it is, and it says nothing about our society because it's been universally condemned. 

More than anything though, I'm sick of hearing about it. You want something to be upset about? Gay teens are being publicly urinated on, set fire to, having body parts cut off, and murdered (with full support of the public and government) all over Russia. Syria just used chemical weapons to kill civilians in its own population (including children), and there are discussions about it becoming the next Iraq if the US gets involved. And we're all scrambling to point out how sad this girl's performance was. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what THAT says about us.”

And that raises an interesting question: Should the issues addressed in the above article be dismissed in favor of other (arguably more horrific) issues going on in the world right now? 

Feminism seems to have a history of being ignored for this very reason (“yes, this is bad but there are other ‘more-bad’ things going on right now so shut up about this until later”) so ‘stop talking about it’ doesn’t seem like the appropriate reaction.  But I guess the reason behind my friend’s Facebook response is how an Awards Show performance seems to be more important than anything else going on – which definitely should not be the case, but is since more people watched the VMAs and have a connection to it than something horrible that’s happening that we have no real frame of reference for.

I guess I answered my own question here (I do that sometimes, writing these ‘train of thought’ posts down helps me organize my thoughts) about where I stand on this so maybe this was a waste of a blogpost, but AT THE TIME I was still forming my own opinions about all this.