Sports in this country continues to be part of the Politics of Distraction where the populace is encouraged to waste time and energy on issues of stimulating non-importance, which takes their focus away from real issues like Immigration, the continuing BP oil spill, poverty, lack of educational opportunities, the continued lack of health care, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and any other important current event that the powers that be don't want us thinking about or looking on.

Because if we thought critically about the destruction of the environment or the exploitation of cheap immigrant labor, Latinos might get angry, mobilize, organize, take to the streets, protest, write letters, sign petitions and use our mass hysterical energies on things that really mattered instead of professional sports. We might get up off the sofas and do something.

But the national semi-consciousness doesn't end there: vampire shows, Celebrity gossip, reality programs, Jerry, Maury and Oprah; telenovelas, horoscopes and Sabado Gigante all contribute to this national amnesia. Like the poppies in "The Wizard of Oz," Latinos distractedly fall asleep. Like my grandmother always said, "camaron que se duerme, se lo lleva la corriente."

Pushed like drugs by politicians, made readily available from my brethren in the news media dealers, the narcotic of distraction is consumed in large quantities by Americans. We are all complicit in nationally living in denial and willful ignorance.

Of course, Americans get overloaded with too much information and too many disasters. Karl Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses but today it's television, the internet, Blackberries, cell phones and iPods that keep us in a political torpor, a sleepless twilight where our pockets are collectively being picked. But we all think it's a big media mirage, we ignore, feel powerless or we are all just willfully indifferent but we can still root for the New York Yankees. As George Carlin once said, "It's the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."

Yes, a healthy distraction of entertainment and sports sometimes might be good and probably necessary but not to the overloaded point where blindness is confused for vision and where we'd rather consume unneeded goods or unhealthy foods, just to feel better about ourselves or, even worse, numb our senses in a tunnel vision of selfishness. That's what the drug companies are for.

It's a diet of only cotton candy, no nutritional value. Ignorance is not bliss, it ravages away like wildfire or an aggressive form of cancer that before one realizes the entire body is ravaged and consumed in tumors.

The American disease is the Politics of Distraction where we care about a candidate's tie, Sarah Palin's view of Russia from her home or any number of unimportant issues to keep our minds distracted from the real issues.

As I pour myself a drink, smoke a cigar, watch pundits verbally duke it out and wait for my Sunday night vampire fix, or watch the 4^th season of "Mad Men," I reflect that the artist formerly known as Prince called the internet dead. He does look good in purple. Just wondering, hmmm, 'wish I had more important things to think about....September, new prime time shows...October, not soccer, but a World Series of a different kind and November...mid-term elections.