Have you heard?
Paris Hilton was released from a Los Angeles jail Thursday due to an unspecified medical condition after serving only three days of her 23-day sentence for violating probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case.
According to authorities, Hilton was sent home with an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet and must remain there for 40 days.
I don't care.
This week Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that it was "too late" to stop Iran's nuclear program and warned the U.S. and its allies not to push for new United Nations sanctions against his regime. Meanwhile, Russia's increasingly belligerent president, Vladimir Putin, threatened the U.S. and Europe with "retaliatory steps"-including
possibly aiming nuclear weapons at targets on the continent-if Washington proceeds to build a missile defense system for Europe.
But, did you know that "actress" Lindsay Lohan checked herself into a rehab center last week after crashing her car and being arrested for suspicion of drunk driving?
It doesn't matter.
We are at war. And American soldiers are dying to preserve our freedom. Fourteen U.S. troops were killed in Iraq last weekend in a series of bomb attacks and clashes with insurgent fighters.
Yes, but were you aware that married New York Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez was caught in a Toronto hotel with a mysterious blonde stripper last week? And that during a subsequent away game in Boston, hundreds of Red Sox fans mocked the slugger by donning yellow-haired masks?
It really doesn't matter.
The American people face an immigration "reform" proposal that does virtually nothing to address the mounting risk of terrorist threats to our homeland.
Here's a conundrum. How is it that at a time when thousands of American troops are risking their lives to battle an enemy who promises our annihilation, the attention of so many Americans is focused on the trivialities of celebrity gossip and scandal?
To be sure, part of our attraction to the celebrity culture derives from its ability to distract our attention-indeed to allow us to "escape"- from the demands of our daily lives, and from the sometimes distressing world around us.
And the media are certainly partly to blame for Americans' fixation on celebrity gossip. A study by PC World, a computer magazine, tracked five news stories circulating on the Internet in late March to see how much attention the media gave to each story. A one-day snapshot found that the death of model Anna Nicole Smith was the most talked about
media event of the day, receiving 691,000 news story mentions, compared with 69,000 references to the Scooter Libby perjury trial verdict and just 53,000 references to the announcement of the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Even worse, a Nexis search of news stories over the last week produced some staggering results, as each of the scandal-plagued celebrities mentioned above received more attention than the consequential political news of the day. Here is a list of some key people and events from last week and the number of references that were made to each in the media.
Lindsay Lohan: 999
Alex Rodriguez: 996
Paris Hilton: 994
Vladimir Putin: 990
Immigration reform: 908
Amhadinejad: 301
Allow me to interpret the data. The media, as a whole, felt that talking about the day to day activities of the "famous for being famous" set and the sexual exploits of a baseball player were higher priorities than discussing the major political stories.
But, lest you think it's just the celebrity-obsessed tabloids that are at fault, even Fox News Channel made more references to both Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan over the past week than it did to Putin, Amadinejad and immigration reform-combined!
Of course, America's obsession with celebrity gossip can in no way be placed solely at the feet of the media. The PC World survey found over 2.6 million Google searches of "Anna Nicole Smith" by Internet users during its one-day study, while the winners of the Noble Peace prize were searched 1.4 million times and the Libby trial got just 671,000 searches.
Apparently, the causal relationship between the media's supply of celebrity gossip and the public's demand for it is a two-way street.
America's seemingly insatiable appetite for celebrity scandal is a troubling sign, but here's an even more alarming truth: Our enemy-facing th e most powerful military force in history-has never concealed its belief that its ultimate triumph, as well as our ultimate
demise, will come about because Americans are too fat, lazy and decadent to care enough to fight for their civilization and their values.
But let me end on an optimistic note. While the media will probably continue to focus on celebrity scandal, I believe the vast majority of Americans would rather learn about and discuss the serious issues of our day. All it takes is for enough of us to stand up and tell the mass media and pop culture, "We don't care!"
