Rant for the week!

OK...so this is my second post today...the first was simply my question for the week. I look forward to the response I get to it and will, early next week, answer that same question myself.

You see, I was going to dive right into my answer to the question BUT...I am, yet again, sidetracked by something else...so on to my rant...

Anna Nicole Smith is dead.

I'm sorry for her friends and family, especially her baby daughter. Smith seemed to be a very troubled soul and, let's not kid ourselves, we all expected her life to end this way. It was a tragic inevitability that she would die young!

I awoke this morning, as I do most mornings, to my radio alarm going off and bringing me my first dose of the "Bob and Sheri" morning talk show. They were discussing the media coverage of Smith's death. Now, maybe I live under a rock sometimes, but I had not heard of the death simply because I rarely watch news programs because of the innane substance that is now considered news (plus I had class last night and performing ANCOVA's was my focus).

By the time I was fully awake and out of bed, I was sure that the coverage of Smith's death would have calmed down since she died yesterday and today is another day. I could not have been more WRONG. As her death was inevitable, so too was the media coverage!

I turn on my local tv station to check out the weather for the weekend and what is the number one story on WSLS 10 out of Roanoke??? No, the number one story was not the local story of a young mother and her two daughters who died in a tragic fire Wednesday night. The number one story on WSLS was the death of Anna Nicole Smith and they (WSLS) even had a local psychiatrist giving expert opinion as to what may have caused the death. CNN, Fox News, they all were and probably still are innundating the airwaves with speculation on what caused the death AND/OR more ridiculous interviews with "eye witnesses" who can only say..."Yes I saw them bring her in but she was covered up on the stretcher"...

Who decided OR decides what is news to the United States of America? When did news become more about crap than actual news? When did Paris Hilton become more important to us than the deaths of our military personnel who are fighting a war that should never have started or the blatant misuse of power that some in our elected government are guilty of? (And please...if someone can tell me why Hilton is a celebrity, please let me know! What has she done other than grow up rich?)

Am I wrong in my assessment that today's news is mostly glitzy, glammy crap? Maybe...but, I don't think so. It is currently 2:10 PM on Friday, February 9, 2007 as I write this. I just went to CNN.com to see what they had as their most prominent story...and yes, not surprisingly, it was about Anna Nicole Smith. You have to scroll down and really look for the report about the violence that has been taking place in Jerusalem today! Enough said?