I am taking a moment to leave the political world and discuss something else. The media has an obsession. That obsession is with stars and it is very dangerous. We are almost on a week now of all this “Britney shaved her head” coverage. When has America sunk so low to be this engaged in such a non-story? I made a post last Saturday entitled “OMG Britney Shaved Her Head!“. I did it to talk about the media’s lack of attention on real stories. That post has received nearly 3,000 views alone now, almost all from people searching about Brittney shaving her head.

We live in a country at war. We live in a country where we still have a city devastated from a hurricane. We live in a country that has nearly 1/3 of it’s population without health insurance and it’s middle class struggling harder to survive. All of this going on and everyone wants to hear about Britney or Anna, or whatever other star is doing something the public doesn’t expect. This should be a morale outrage to our nation, no matter what party you affiliate with or God you pray to. With this kind of behavior, is it any wonder why we are hated by others?

I blame the media for a large part of Anna Nicole’s death and Britney’s problems. Britney is only 25 and has had to live under the microscope of public opinion. The cable news networks rush to get psychologists on their shows analyzing her, yet they are so happy to get their own 5 minutes of fame they don’t even mention that the biggest problem is all this talk. Can anyone seriously blame them for wanting to go out and get drunk or high to escape the reality that has become their life?

I am writing this to give major props to Craig Ferguson. I wrote about how much I respect him Friday night (when I posted about the new season of Real Time). That respect went up this week. He had the nerve to take his late night show and turn the usual comedy opening monologue and turn it into a serious issue – the constant attention and harm the media, as well as America, is doing to these people. Ferguson went through the same thing himself 15 years ago. It is bad when it takes a person, who is not even a citizen of this country, to make this analysis (check out his interview on YouTube about his stance). The media uses the argument “well our ratings are high”. Well so are the ratings of the local drug dealer, when asked by the town junkie.

We have soldiers dying in a war and the media won’t talk about them. We have numerous other serious problems happening that the media ignores. They are the ones to blame for what happened to Anna and Britney. They should feel ashamed for the thoughtless pursuit of ratings.