I had not watched TV for seven years and had not missed it one bit – I got my news from the Internet, entertainment from travel, outdoor activities and books. A few months ago I got married and my wife convinced me to sell my soul and buy cable. At first, it did not bother me – I only turned on the TV to watch The Simpsons, the Discovery and the National Geographic channels. Lately, I’ve been catching myself doing something naughty – leaving TV on just to have background noise when I work.
With the TV running seemingly harmlessly on the background, I began to catch snippets of news and various useless shows that clutter the world, perpetually lowering the global IQ one point at a time.
The world is full of wonderful and horrible things that happen every day and are worth mentioning. Alas, people are not interested in these things. This morning I turned on the TV to watch the news. A horrifying story about a drunk man killing his girlfriend with a machete and maiming her two kids (the coverage took less than 30 seconds) was immediately followed by a 4-minute expose of Jamie Lynn Spears, her pregnancy, her boyfriend and whether Nickelodeon is planning on keeping her on.
I switched channels, hoping to hear about presidential candidates, world news, or at least something not involving another scandalous star. Apparently, I was asking for too much. Switching channel brought on a touching story about how Jamie’s boyfriend is planning on taking responsibility for his child and how the couple will raise the baby in Louisiana.
Yet another channel told me about that the publishing company postponed the release of Lynne Bridges’ (Britney’s mom) book about how she managed to raise two stars.
After the third fiasco I grabbed my laptop and fired up Firefox. Google search on “spears + pregnancy” returned approximately 552,000 hits, including articles from reputable news agencies such as the International Herald Tribune and MSNBC. Next, I went on Digg, and ran the same search there. 1,370 hits.
Do people have nothing else to talk or write about? Are “bad girls” such as Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohen, Britney Spears and her younger sibling so important to our culture that little else matters.
Kurt Vonnegut’s passing received only a passing mention in the news. Lucianno Pavarotti’s death went virtually unnoticed. Putin was elected the Times man of the year, and yet how does that compare in terms of news coverage with yet another scandal involving our beloved stars?
There are millions of people in this world who are much more worthy of notice than a redneck from Mississippi with little talent, or a spoiled heiress to a multi-billion-dollar fortune. Maybe we should start looking for our icons outside of Hollywood.
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