Enough with the bimbo dead pools already

As much as we here at B@B are Keith Olbermann's biggest non-stalkerish fans, I really think it's time to shitcan the "Keeping Tabs" section of Countdown. There may have been a time when celebrity foibles, punctuated by Michael Musto's snark, was a fun break from the horrors of Life in the Bush Years, but that time is now past.

This week Patrick Fitzgerald cast a very strong shadow over a Vice President who wasn't on trial -- yet. That Vice President is going around talking up the war as if it were still 2002. The British are throwing in the towel on Iraq, al-Qaeda is regrouping in Pakistan and Afghanistan, wounded American soldiers are getting shitty care at Walter Reed at the same time as Bush's budget cuts funding for veterans' medical benefits -- and the Bush Administration is pointing the "Not me, him" finger. And then of course there's the Administration's preparations for attacking Iran.

Yet if you watch television news or worse, listen to news radio, there just story getting attention: the public meltdown of Britney Spears. let's not even get into how disgusting it is that with one melted-down bimbo's corpse rotting into putrefaction in a Florida morgue while a showboating judge auditions for his own reality show, the media deathwatch moves on to another one, salivating at the thought that this one too might end up dead. But with a failed presidency, led by two highly delusional and evil men, planning an expanded Middle East war, there is just too much real news; too much Americans have an OBLIGATION to know, to continue feeding this absurd maw of celebrity obsession.

Bob Herbert agrees:

I imagine that there are a fair number of television viewers and newspaper readers who have trouble distinguishing the relative importance of celebrity stories, like the death of Anna Nicole Smith, from other matters in the news, like the reconstitution of forces responsible for the devastating Sept. 11 attacks.

If air time is any guide, there’s no contest. It’s been obvious for the longest time that the line between news and entertainment has vanished. News is entertainment. And the death of Anna Nicole Smith is more entertaining — for the time being, at least — than the war in Iraq or the plodding machinations of bin Laden and Zawahri.

Paris Hilton and Britney Spears were on the cover of Newsweek last week with the headline “The Girls Gone Wild Effect.” When you turned to the story, there was a full-page picture of the former best friends, with a glassy-eyed Britney looking for all the world like a younger version of Anna Nicole Smith.

The lead-in to the article said in large type: “Paris, Britney, Lindsay and Nicole — They seem to be everywhere and they may not be wearing underwear.”

The nation may be at war, and Al Qaeda may be gearing up for a rematch. But that’s no fun, not when Britney is shaving off her hair and Jennifer Aniston is reported to have a new nose and the thrill-a-minute watch over Anna Nicole’s remains is still the hottest thing on TV.

It was Neil Postman who warned in 1985 that we were amusing ourselves to death. I’m not sure anyone knew how literally to take him.

More than 20 years later, the masses have nearly succeeded in drawing the curtains on anything that’s not entertaining. No one can figure out what do about Iraq or Al Qaeda. A great American cultural center like New Orleans was all but washed away, and no one knows how to put it back together. The ice caps are melting and Al Gore is traveling the land like the town crier, raising the alarm about global warming.

But none of that has really gotten the public’s attention. None of it is amusing enough. As a nation of spectators, we seem content to sit with a pizza and a brew in front of the high-def flat-screen TV, obsessing over Anna Nicole et al., and giving no thought to the possibility that the calamitous events unfolding in the world may someday reach our doorsteps.

The problem is that when it does (probably around the time of the 2008 election), the same people devouring the latest news about Britney, Paris, or Lindsay will be perfectly willing to accept the martial law for which the Bush Administration is preparing already on the grounds that it's necessary "to keep us safe."

And somehow the fact that they were too busy devouring the latest about Anna Nicole's baby or Britney's alcoholism to pay attention to the fact that their leaders are not only not keeping them safe but actively doing what they can to make sure another attack on our shores DOES happen will escape them.