Please allow me to point out this excerpt from today’s episode of Loaded:

I really loathe the celebrity gossip culture. I read an article recently that suggested that celebrity obsession was a healthy outlet for most people. I can’t find the link at the moment but no matter because I disagree with the article. Celebrity obsession is not good for most people. It distracts us from real issues. Al Gore said it best in his book The Assault On Reason:

“At first I thought the exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial was just an unfortunate excess—an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time: the Michael Jackson trial and the Robert Blake trial, the Laci Peterson tragedy and the Chandra Levy tragedy, Britney and KFed, Lindsay and Paris and Nicole.

While American television watchers were collectively devoting 100 million hours of their lives each week to these and other similar stories, our nation was in the process of more quietly making what future historians will certainly describe as a series of catastrophically mistaken decisions on issues of war and peace, the global climate and human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness. For example, hardly anyone now disagrees that the choice to invade Iraq was a grievous mistake. Yet, incredibly, all of the evidence and arguments necessary to have made the right decision were available at the time and in hindsight are glaringly obvious.”

I hate to lose faith in our society just because we are searching for Britney Spears but it is hard not to. Thus the rant. I’m sorry to be negative. It is not my usual M.O. but sometimes belligerence is necessary.

Oh, and Happy Holidays!