What has Britney done lately?

What is the deal with the news?

Let's consider the major news outlets, just think about them...good.

Now, consider this question: What has Britney Spears done lately?

Answers:
* Divorced white trash.
* Not released a a top-ten single in over three years (last one: Toxic in Feb 2004).
* Shaved her head.
* Checked into rehab.

Now, consider this:
This afternoon, Senate suffered a very narrow defeat in an attempt to block President Bush's order for more troops in Iraq. How narrow was this defeat? Four votes. This movement had a lot of support from both sides of the house, Republican and Democrat...however, there were four last minute votes from senators who decided to support Bush's redeployment of troops. This is major news, considering that our legislature is widely controlled by the Democrats, who oppose Bush's plans.

So, I check the major news outlets...first I check CNN.com. Then I check MSNBC.com. Then I check FoxNews.com. Then I check CBSnews.com. Then I check ABCnews.com. Just about everyone of these news sites had the news about the senate side-by-side with the Britney Spears rehab/shaved head story.

So, let's check news.bbc.co.uk...we can usually rely on BBC news for good and serious coverage, right?

We've got Condoleezza Rice preparing for a peace summit...and Britney's dumb bald head.

How do these events have equal billing?

Senate is doing things to try to fix the country, as is Condoleezza...but what has Britney done lately? Absolutely nothing.

She used to be a pretty face, but now without the hair, she just looks like a crazy white girl who went crazy after a drug induced haze. Britney hasn't done anything lately, and her notoriety is comparable to that of Paris Hilton, people who are now just famous to be famous.

This is more of a commentary on media sensationalism...and my utter disbelief that sensationalist stories about "Britney Nobody" have the same weight as Iraq or world peace. I can't blame the media for this, rather the mass audiences who feed into this, and keep leeches in the spotlight while tragedies like Darfur stay in the shadows, while children in Africa are fighting a war for blood diamonds. It's insane to me.

This isn't an issue of a liberal controlled media, or a conservative controlled outlet, this is an issue of what we collectively tune into, and what drives our society closer to a post-literate, post-intellectual society, addicted to celebrities through whom we vicariously live our lives, video games to take us away from reality, and junk food to make us more dissatisfied with the way we are. We, as a nation, as a society, have the ability to be smarter than this, to be more intellectual than water cooler talk about a bald has-been nothing celebrity, and yet our society demands that these stories hold the same weight as a failing war and a breeding peace, and overshadow massive tragedies.

Does Britney's falling out deserve to be headline news? Yeah, but in an entertainment magazine, or in a music section...it's definitely not front page material, especially considering what all is going on in this world.