2012: The Mayans may have got it right

This may very well be our last year alright.

I'm definitely preparing for the end of life as we know it, and I encourage you to do so as well.

I am not referring to the Mayan calendar apocalyptic predictions either. Frankly, I think that whole bit was really just some poor scribe got sick of chiseling and decided that 2012 more years in the future was enough of a buffer. Give them credit though, they certainly were looking out for the future generations…take that, Social Security.

Rather, the end of our world will come about through our own hands, both in what actions we take and what actions we fail to take.

For example, buzz is afloat about the Dakota Fanning Cosmopolitan cover "controversy". The image of the nearly 18 year-old actress is nothing risqué at all. Her image IS however surrounded by the short, sexy headlines and teasers (ha, pun wasn't even intended) Cosmo is so famous for.

Some European areas are even banning the cover, citing that a minor on the cover featuring such naughty phrasing is just wrong.

For the record, this is the same Dakota Fanning who played a very promiscuous underage in The Runaways, alongside Kristen Stewart.

The same actress who CHOSE to film such things. This isn't 15 year-old Miley posing nude save a sheet. Fanning is fully dressed on a magazine that I would estimate 75% of fellow 17 year-old read themselves. Stop pretending to be prudes.

Meanwhile, sex trafficking is (according to the United Nations) a $32 billion annual industry. About 2.5 million people—most all of them women and children—are sold as sex slaves each year.

 I challenge you to a Google test: type in "Dakota Fanning" and record the number of hits. Then follow suit with "Human trafficking". Don't accept the challenge? That's fine. I already did it. Point proven.

We give a hell of a lot more rats' asses about the "appropriateness" of little Dakota's magazine cover than we do about the women and children enduring legitimate inappropriateness worldwide.

In fact, I can pinpoint right now just where all the media coverage that SHOULD be going to human trafficking and other equally oppressive human rights calamities will be going this year—the 2012 US presidential elections. Let's save ourselves the drama and accept that Barrack Obama is going to be chilling in the White House a wee bit longer. Sorry, GOP and the Republican Party.

You should have gotten your elephants up in a line earlier.

So now instead of the incessant primary election coverage and the political analysts and commentators repeating the same jargon again and again, we could utilize some of that air time to increase awareness on other issues.

Even better, take some time during the Olympics this year—appropriately the world's most watched event—to show everyone around the world just what the heck is happening around the world. It may be foggy in London, but we have a chance here to shine a little light on issues elsewhere, and that could make for a brighter tomorrow.

Or we could just air a lot of Axe and Sprint commercials.

I'm not predicting that a nuclear war will ensue, thus leading to our physical demise this year. Rather, I am saying that the American character—the international character—is suffering immensely and perchance, it needs to be put out of its misery. That is, if saving it seems too heavy a burden.