How DARE NBC do this to Conan... or Jay... or Johnny... or Ed

Well the war rages as thousands of people have begun wearing Team Leno and Team Coco shirts to proclaim their allegiance to either Jay Leno or Conan O'Brien.  I myself have decided to wade into the controversy by authorizing my people (Jenny down at the local Kinko's) to announce that I, Darren McLeod, DON'T CARE!!!!!!!  Stay tuned to see what NBC offers me to calm down.

All joking aside, I truly don't care about Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien.  But maybe that's just me.  I can assure you it's part of a looooong history of not bothering to care about stupid, insipid rivalries that mean absolutely nothing to anyone other than two or three millionaires.  But it seems to draw all us poor people into a heated debate over a situation that has NOTHING to do with us.  AT ALL!

I've always felt this way.

For example, I chose not to take a stand over which soda I preferred.  Oh, I'm sorry, I  mean which 'Cola' I preferred.  Nor did I lose sleep when Coke changed it's 'formula'.  However the fact that people felt their entire identities depended on their brand of cola was a sad lead in to which computer manufacturer you march behind in the Mac vs PC war to end all wars.

Are you sitting down?  You really should be sitting down for this next sentence.

I own neither a Blackberry or an Iphone.  I will pause my typing until you come around...

<<Hank?!?  Can you get me a beer?  Because I'm writing in my blog!!  What?!?!  I CAN'T  HEAR YOU!!  WHAT?!?!  Oh for God's... I"LL GET IT MYSELF!!!  I SAID, I'LL GET IT MYSELF!!!!  NEVER MIND!!!  Oh, thanks, you didn't have to come all the way up here.  I said, I'd get it,  aww, you're sweet.  No, I'm just waiting for my readers to come to.  Oh, there they are!  Talk to you later.>>

Ready now?  Okay.  First, let me assure you that life is still livable here in my cave though  a feud is raging over which is a better boulder chair - granite or sandstone.  I'm thinking of tatooing 'Take it for Granite' on my forehead, but those Sandstoners can be pretty vicious if they catch you away from your pod.

If I sound condescending, it's because I am.  I was there for the VHS vs Betamax battle.  The  Cola war.  The computer feud.  The HD DVD vs Blu-Ray rumble.  And now, the Team Leno vs Team Conan talk show Cage Fight.

I can understand Conan and Jay caring.  The rest of us giving a rat's ass mystifies me.  YOU don't get the millions these guys do.  YOU don't have a television show.  YOU are not even known to them, so put it in perspective.  A man is giving up MILLIONS (and getting MILLIONS as compensation... WTF?!?!) because his 'time-slot' is being moved to half an hour later and he won't tolerate it. Two shows with miserable ratings are being re-arranged and suddenly people are wearing T-shirts proudly proclaiming which side they're on, and actually CARING.

The part of this whole thing that is really sad, though, is that this same T-shirt wearing schmuck is waking up every morning to punch in to his $12.00/hr job from which he's about to be laid off (don't tell him - it's a surprise!)  But when THAT happens, well, THAT he can accept, but The Tonight Show coming on at 12:05am instead of 11:35pm?  Call the Coast Guard!  Conan was betrayed!  Who does Leno think he is?!?!  Better to ask, who does Leno think you are?  Probably sheep number 2,045,938 who'll get him some more cash so he can buy some more cars.  I'm afraid he's right.

NBC, Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno.  They can care about this.  Why not, it's about millions of dollars.  The rest of us cattle should probably care more about WHY they get that kind of money in the first place.  If they and the sports star, and the movie star, and the 'Tycoons' of this world, AND the studios all got $12.00 an hour for the work they did, like the rest of us, houses would cost $10,000.00, cars $400.00, movie tickets Seventy Five Cents and WE, the REAL people, could actually have lives that didn't revolve around how one poor millionaire got shafted by another, which sugary drink tastes better, which money pit cell phone tortures us less, or which computer makes us feel less stupid.  We could also stop being poor and start caring about what unfair acts are being done to US instead of millionaires.

And maybe, just maybe we could stop wearing 'team' T-shirts to proclaim how 'individual' we are and start thinking again.  Hell, it's not that difficult.  Start slow - put on a T-shirt that says, 'Team Poor'.