Celebrity, real people and the whole tawdry business

So it has finally been announced that some guy with bad hair has been proven to be the father of a little girl whose mother died in really sad circumstances. This led to wall-to-wall coverage on Fox News, CNN, SKY News, BBC as well as on the network TV shows on both sides of the Atlantic.


Anna Nicole Smith is not the issue here - it is so sad that someone was so duped by a sick and seriously twisted culture that she came to believe that the only thing worth pursuing was fame even when she acknowledged that it wasn't even making her happy. The problem I have is that this is somehow considered of public consequence. Have we got to the point where it is not just celebrity gossip magazines and tabloids that run stories of human tragedy for the benefit of entertainment, but that you can have serious journalists such as Hannity and Colmes actually having a debate over the results of a paternity test for the daughter of a former Playboy model? Is this all that is left in the modern world? The fight has been given up, and appealing to the lowest common denominator in sex, multiple lovers, drugs and death is what all 'news' is now about?

Our culture is at war with itself. On the one hand we ring our hands over the sexualisation of children, celebrity culture, exploitation of women, low educational standards and increasing violence; but then we create and buy Bratz dolls in fishnet stockings, jeans for 9 year old girls with 'Sexy' across the backside, we all watch people destroy themselves on Celebrity Big Brother, create mind-numbing TV and are, in the word's on Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death.