Some say that the Roman Empire never fell, it simply adapted. I couldn't agree more, and I for one am finding that my internet/TV media experience has me wanting to chuck an apple at the guy sitting next to me in the stands of "the coliseum." He's Archie Bunker meets Homer Simpson meets Michael Scott meets someone making a Youtube video for his 15 minutes of relevance. Yet, the American to whom these archetypes cater—the one who is both a rugged individual yet defined by his consumerism—is my main person of concern.

Clearly most of us live in contempt of the elite, whoever they are. Populism is all the rage right now, especially now that everyone's credit cards are maxed out. We are conveniently distracted from facing our own part in the nation's woes and instead the collective rage is directed at a whole tier of people and not the few robber barons who profited most. People are quick to assume the worst about those in higher brackets, even if they don't have any context for their experiences. We're seeing this now as the public fixates on Sheen and Galliano. If famous actors and artists can be sexist, racist inebriates...well, maybe the "Haves" are all too corrupt to and we can adjust our aspirations accordingly.

As the story of Galliano's anti-Semitic remarks launched, the creators of the YouTube video achieved instant noteriety as we all watched the trainwreck in dismay. It was a complete set of bookends with 20/20's Charlie Sheen interview, where the media did its job (minus the jounalistic integrity) of maintaining its position as owner of the coliseum, and we the viewing public played our part as the plebeian mob—willing to buy into whatever we are fed. We all seem to have the need to watch people whose achievements are well above what we can ever hope to accomplish come crashing down. Perhaps it will always be a our nature to delight in someone else's fall from grace. Personally, I want to know why 20/20 is okay with such low-level interviewing techniques (the reporter Andrea Canning, acting and looking like an indignant soccer mom, was as much of a reactive twit as her subject), and I want to know the backstory about the individuals involved with creating the incident involving Galliano before I make any assessment or draw a conclusion about its content. It seems fair, yet I can almost hear my peers insisting that by not being instantly horrified I must then be on the wrong side of the moral compass. The truth is, I don't want to be pulled around by anything or anyone easily. I'm attempting to be mature, methodical, and objective in my views.

I'm choosing to keep myself from accepting a political identity or a belief system that would enslave me to such reactions. We as readers should have thoughts and positions more complex than a mere headline. We can refuse to cater to the expected. The word "fascist" gets used a lot these days, mostly by those who who would make ideal citizens in a fascist state, wherein people buy the hype, don't question, don't even show sympathy. Nations have been swayed to do the unthinkable through propaganda and slick, industrial, guerilla marketing. Yet, here we are being pulled along, voicing reactive opinions in a similar dynamic. Shouldn't we know better by now, even if the targets are individuals instead of political and ethnic groups? At best, this is the behavior of bullies, the mobs of the coliseum crying for blood.

Some details of Galliano's person and professional life seem critical if one is to make a decent assessment of his character. The fact that Galliano is gay and has Jewish ancestry should in theory make him sympathetic to peoples on the receiving of end of  "-isms" and certainly Hitler's Final Solution. It is interesting that coverage that probes why someone so talented, at the top of his career would bother making such inane comments is impossible to find. Patricia Fields, stylist known for her work on "Sex and the City" and countless editorials in Vogue internationally, has voiced her support of Galliano, stating that the whole thing is a farce. Galliano received the financial backing and high society stamp needed to give him credibility in Paris from John Bult and Mark Rice of venture firm Arbela Inc and Portuguese socialite and fashion patron Sao Schlumberger. This was how the John Galliano fashion house was established, and it is regarded as an important moment in high fashion circles.

Why should we care? Perhaps the character depictions of our fallen heroes say something about us. Maybe the real story lies in sorting out what it takes to sell something to us during the commercial break. After all, who cares about high fashion when most of us are happy to max-out our credit cards at the nearest outlet of chain stores on clothes made by children. Don't most of us want 25 horribly constructed items of clothing rather than just one good one? Who can afford high-end, right? If we're not going to spend our time cultivating our talents and inner character, why not spend our time pointing and laughing at those who are in a state of crashing and burning from their own attempts to do so? What, after all, do they have to do with ME?

Most of us don't see the connection to what we wash down the drain and public health, much less the unreal people in the images that dance in front of us. We value our independence to such an extent that we fail to see that we are all an extension of the singular super-organism that is humanity. The good thing is that we no longer attempt to satiate our bloodlust by tearing our own kind to shreds...at least not literally. Tribalism persists in partisan and ideological divides, where, as usual, people are willing to jump to conclusions and demonize each other without context. In the case of organized religion, it is all the rage among many secular individuals to oversimplify its historical role, especially that of Catholicism, and call out its hypocrisies and highlight its brutal past, when frankly the world has always been brutal, with or without religion. What do they lose in this process? The sacrificial god (Christ, Horus, Adonis, et al) offered nourishment, renewal, and a communal bond between peoples, and later developed into a reminder that inner peace and neighborly love was life's great objective. When such a doctrine is secularized, divisive dogma can be removed to a point, but to maintain these personal bonds and deeper understanding of each other then requires an additional effort that most people prove unwilling to make. Comfortably separated from one another, we can fling our unresearched opinions about, convinced that we are smarter now than we were in some archaic time when we thought we needed icons, flesh sacrifices, and forgiveness.

I think Michael Scott from The Office (The Duel Season 5) said it best when he said:

"My philosophy is basically this. And this is something that I live by. And I always have. And I always will. Don't ever, for any reason, do anything to anyone, for any reason, ever, no matter what. No matter ... where. Or who, or who you are with, or where you are going, or ... or where you've been ... ever. For any reason, whatsoever."