Rot Off the Press

OMG!  Have you heard?  Jennifer Grey is the judges' favorite on "Dancing With the Stars".  Snooki wants to date a nympho.  "Australia's Next Top Model" crowned the wrong winner on live TV.  Michael Douglas has cancer.  And the Bachelorette just broke up with her fiance.

When did this happen?  When did talk shows like "The Merv Griffin Show" devolve into Jerry Springer and Howard Stern?  Will we do anything for our 15 minutes? 

It used to be that only "white trash" would air their dirty laundry in public.  That lesson stuck so hard that I view all "reality" shows as catering to the sleaze factor of the trailer set.  Come on, people.  Do we really need to watch a bunch of vapid narcissists out-shallow each other with their tantrums and gotcha moments?

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that there is only one television set in the Gaelic household.  And the one set is usually unplugged (damn energy vampire) and turned on only for special occasions or Netflix viewings.

Just as the families on "19 Kids and Counting" and "Sister Wives" don't discuss how their religion plays a major role in having so many children or spouses, this blog is doing a grand job eluding the question of whether activities like blogging and Facebook updates aren't grasps for 15 minutes' worth of fame, if only from a small number of people.  Is it really important that the people I went to high school with know whether I had an intense ballet class or am missing Finola?  Who do I write for?  Why do I write?

Is it important to know that gunmen hijacked a school bus in Nigeria and kidnapped 15 children?  What does it mean that Syria and Iraq have restored full diplomatic relations (you mean they broke diplomatic relations sometime?)?  Who is Kim Jong-un and why did he go to boarding school in Switzerland?  Is Brazil's cozy relationship with Iran really threatening the presidency of Dilma Rousseff?  Does the Spanish unions' strike have anything to do with the austerity measures in other countries?

Do most people prefer the pablum of fluff?  Has our national attention span been relegated to mere seconds?  Is anybody still reading this?

Maybe none of us is better than the dirt-poor mama with six kids running around in a yard that she keeps clean with a broom.  Maybe we need the fluff to keep our minds off of our daily monotony.  I don't have the answers.  But I doubt I'll find them in the grocery store check-out aisle.