I already swore that I would NOT write about celebrities.
I lied once. Now twice.
Let me explain.
I get some of my email at comcast.net. I don't love the interface but the home page gives you a fast look at what is going on in the world. There's a big section on top that changes every couple of seconds: it features news and sports and shopping and product promotions and oddities and more.
Underneath that section, however, are a few headlines grouped under a simple, yet imposing title: TOP NEWS. Note the use of the word "top." It denotes priority. It suggests importance and substance. It leads one to believe that, while some news may be secondary in nature, and other news perhaps ordinary, the headlines below this banner will surely reek of significance when cast against the backdrop of world events.
And here were today's four headlines:
12,000 Civilians Killed in Iraq
Ford Funeral Draws Crowds
Iran Asserts Nuclear Intentions
Spears Falls Asleep at Vegas Club
Anyone wanna bet which story got the most clicks?
About Me
- Mike D
- Doylestown, Pennsylvania, United States
- "You are only young once, but you can be immature forever." That's my 2nd favorite quote of all time. My first comes from Rudyard Kipling from his poem IF. And it goes something like . . . "If a man can meet with Triumph and Disaster . . . and treat those two Imposters just the same . . . "
3 comments:
Hi Mike D,
First time reader, long time blog fan. I'm Roz's roommate, we met on your visit to Scottsdale.
As a fellow blogger I appreciate your desire to set boundaries for yourself, but its been my experience that as soon as you do something comes along thats just too good not to mention (Teen-pop princesses who've lost their lustre and are caught napping in pubic for example). In this case your making a social commentary, not gossiping, so its all good. I saw a similar set of headlines on MSN.com and wondered to myself why it was considered newsworthy.
~Brian
Hey, Brian -- thanks for the comment --
Britney fascinates America -- I've never seen celebrity fixation carried to such an extreme (made worse by omnipresent, instantaneous methods for capturing her every move!)
I just liked her Pepsi commercials . . .
I think its sort of the Paris Hilton syndrome, where she's gotten now to the point where she's famous for being famous. She was never the most talented of that group of pop-tarts, that was Christina Aguilera (who would have guessed that SHE would seem like the normal one now?), she was excellent at marketing herself to teens as well as adults, and some select females (more than one straight woman I know had a crush on her), but the wheels started to fall off after a point (that first Vegas marriage) and the media smelled blood in the water. She's what? 22? Twenty-two year olds make bad decisions, its part of being twenty-two. Imagine if you had a gaggle of paparazzi tailing you through your teens and early twenties, there are many things I can remember (and more that I can't) that would have been quite embarrassing were they made national news.
Here's the funny thing, I don't even follow this kind of crap, I never watched her creepy show, don't read tabloids, any of that. Thats how ubiquitous her escapades are, they're forced upon those of us who aren't trying (Matt Leinart's involvement didn't help any since it just opened up the previously untapped sports megamedia).
I'd rather those sections of my brain were used for something, I don't know...productive, like storing Spanish vocabulary words, or remembering cool passages of Nabokov, but they're wasted now and I can't have them back.
~B
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