So many wannabes manage to grab their fifteen minutes of fame, only to quickly (and mercifully) disappear from the public eye.  But not so with San Diego Surfer-Dude (real name Jason Greenslate) who, thanks to the desperate-for-content news media, seems determined to stay in the public eye for as long as the welfare state is willing to support his lifestyle.

To his delight, a number of reporters and news anchors have covered the adventures of Surfer-Dude over the past year or so in an apparent effort to stir up thoughts of euthanasia amongst those who still believe in the quaint notion of working for a living.  The media seems to be enamored by a beach bum who brags about buying lobster and sushi with his food stamp allotment.  I guess they believe it proves that redistribution-of-wealth policies do, in fact, work quite well for those on the receiving end of things.

In a recent episode of Surfer-Dude, The O’Reilly Factor sent all-American boy Jesse Watters to visit with the twenty-nine-year-old unemployed surfer and chat with him about his life and his prospects for the future.

It was quite a contrast in styles — the well-groomed Watters, sporting a clean-cut, short-hair look, and Surfer-Dude, featuring scraggly locks flowing down past his shoulders, cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth, tank-top shirt, black ball cap worn in the classic in-your-face backward position, sunglasses, and a vocabulary you would expect of any surfer-dude worthy of his scruffy image.

Everything Watters asked Surfer-Dude brought forth a river of banal words and phrases such as “chicks,” “booze,” “cool,” “hey, man,” etc.  A paragon of intellectualism he is not.  But Surfer-Dude insists he’s a serious musical artiste and full-fledged member of a cool little band with the heartwarming moniker “Rattlife.”

When Watters asked him how much money he expected to make in his music career, Surfer-Dude responded, “Millions and millions of dollars, man.”  In fact, he thinks it will happen so quickly that he’ll be off food stamps within a month.  His positive mental attitude is enough to send a tingle up Chris Matthews’s leg.

But don’t laugh.  When you consider all the publicity the media has given him and pair that up with the cesspool culture that dominates a large part of American society, it’s not out of the question that Surfer-Dude could join the ranks of so many other crude, untalented, young miscreants who have become rich and famous simply by being outrageous.

I realize that a lot of intelligent, hardworking Americans who bathe regularly get upset when they see vile stuff like this, but do guys like Surfer-Dude really signal the death of Western values?  Short of America’s apathetically allowing itself to slide all the way to communism, I think not.  I believe that quality — in products, music, art, and people — will never be relegated to the trash bin of anachronisms and that hard work, knowledge, and sound morals will always find a way to rise to the top.

Zig Ziglar once made an interesting comment in a talk he invited me to in the late eighties.  He said that in America, a person is free to dye his hair pink, wear an earring in his nose, cover his neck with the most outrageous tattoos imaginable, and inject the F word into every sentence.  “But,” said Zig, “employers are also free not to hire him.”

And that’s the reason I wrote this article.  It’s for those who sometimes second-guess themselves and start wondering if their efforts to be well groomed and conduct themselves in a gracious, civil, professional manner will actually pay off.  The answer is a resounding YES!  Though a surfer-dude type occasionally finds a way to slink in under the “non-music music” door and make it big, it shouldn’t be your concern.

Why?  Because the success or failure of the surfer-dudes of the world has no effect whatsoever on your success.  There’s no denying that raunchy clowns like Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, and Kanye West enjoy a brain dead audience of millions worldwide, but it doesn’t prevent clean-cut, seriously talented young people like David Garrett, Josh Groban, and Il Volo from making it big.

If you haven’t yet been infected by the sloth culture of surfer-dudeism, don’t be intimidated.  Stay your course.  There are millions of us out here who still appreciate high quality — and are willing to pay for it.