Awareness Ribbons are Stupid

I arrived at work this morning, fired up my laptop and signed on to check emails, drink coffee, basically wake myself up after a weekend far too short. My home page is Google. Below the search bar there was a small white ribbon. I was curious to find out what important "cause" for which the white ribbon had been publicly claimed, for years ago my small group of friends anointed it the "I care more than you do" ribbon. 

I moved the mouse down to hover over the ribbon, and Google told me that it stood for "International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women". 

Holy Shit. How did I miss this??? Why wasn't I notified? Shouldn't I be off of work?

Did we really need an international day to make us all aware that there is still some redneck asshole bashing his wife with a baseball bat for over-cooking the turkey? And do we need a ribbon to remind us of this momentous day? If so, how will the adornment of these ribbons solve the problem? Maybe the very mention of this to said redneck will send him into an angry tirade and cause him to beat his woman harder. Maybe the ribbon helps; maybe it doesn't. Maybe it just makes us feel better for not being able to do anything meaningful about it. Regardless, I'm tired of everyone's stupid cause. People have been wearing these badges of smugness for years and most have accomplished little more than making themselves look like they care. 

People have an air of self-righteousness about them about these things. If we don't wear these ribbons, does this mean we support these problems? If I don't put a "Support the Troops" sticker on my car, does that invariably mean I want all the troops to be blown to hell? If an NFL player doesn't put something obnoxiously pink on and distract everyone, does that mean he wants everybody's tits to rot off? Maybe if I don't grow a mustache my gentleman's yarbles will dissolve. Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David recognized the idiocy of this trend almost twenty years ago:

More after the jump.....