Celebrity News Makes Me SickFollow

I sat down to eat lunch today, and as always, CNN was on the TV in the food court. I started to watch, expecting to hear about Bush's tour of the Middle East, the crazy snow in New England, and possibly some election coverage. However, at the start of the broadcast, the "top story" was Brittney Spears missing her court date.

Who. *******. Cares.

This country's obsession with the personal lives of celebrities is sickening. If K-Fed maintains sole custody, good for him. Brittney is a wacko who should probably be taken away by men in white coats, but it shouldn't been the "top story," much less even be mentioned on a syndicated news program like CNN. Save that **** for tabloids and celebrity TV networks, both of which are about as useful and interesting as a one legged soccer player.

Useful? Perhaps not. But uninteresting?

Well, someone is up on his Brit-brit news.

If we don't get to hear about Britney's downfall, how are we ever to feel justified in our feelings of the undeserving nature of her rise to glory?

We have to read bad stories about celebrities so that our accomplishments feel more worthy in light of their inability to appreciate their privileged status!

Nexa

I don't care for television.

Nexa

x8

I couldn't agree more. Since the moment Anna Nicole died, I've been hoping the day isn't far off that Britney would take a dirt nap right beside her and maybe, just MAYBE, we wouldn't have to hear about the no-talent trailer-trash ***** any more.

I'm a little sick of the daily Britney updates as well.


I'd still hit it though.

And you can pull all sorts of tricks out of it!

So far he's not feeding them to the paparazzi, thats a step up from Britney.

Yeah, that crap makes me sick too. I stopped watching most news programs years ago primarily due to this inclusions of fluff/puff pieces. I only watch specific programs that I know won't show this crap--like Lou Dobbs or Brit Hume. An occasional aside is fine, but the cable stations have become inundated with the Brittanys, Hiltons, and Martha Stewarts.

Celebs aren't the only problem--massive overreporting on mundande crimes also pervades the system. This is troubling not only because it's meaningless national/international "news", but because of the bias towards the victims being almost invariably white, young, and female. There's even a wiki article devoted to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

What's the cause though? I don't remember it being this bad until 10-15 years ago. Perhaps the 80s corporate $$ mindset may have missed major news networks until later. The popularity of trailer-trash shows like Jerry Springer, and celeb shows dumbed everything down--the massive tonal shift in Maury Povich's show is an easy example. But it also homogenized "hard news" networks. They bought into both the mindset of "this is what the public wants to see" and "the sole purpose of our station is to make maximum profits for our parent company", with networks being bought by such corporations an unfornate expediator of selling out.

Not even sure this is what the viewers want. Trailer-trash expose shows died out for the most part, but the major news networks are still devoting hundreds of segments per day on the latest (read: nothing's changed) "update" on some missing white woman or some idiot celebrity. Doesn't seem likely to revert to hard news though :(



I can't remember any pieces on any third-party Presidential candidates in the last six months. Or any pieces longer than 30 seconds about the latest African machete civil war. There's plenty of news that's internationally or nationally important that they simply aren't airing. A piece on Brittany every few hours is fine, but every hour--with five+ minutes devoted to it? Five more to latest missing white woman, five to school bus overturned in Kansas, five to OJ Simpson--every hour? It's just stupidity overkill.