attack of the air-headed skanks

I read an excellent article on The Huffington Post by Marty Kaplan about America and its news: how the majority of passive, entertainment-seeking Americans surely know everything about Paris Hilton but nothing about developments in Iraq that spell continued disaster for both Iraq and the U.S. and more importantly anyone there who might get in the way of a bullet or a bomb. Choosing mostly not to watch network TV and never to watch network TV news, I was somewhat isolated when golddigging air-headed skank Anna Nicole Smith met Glory. Sure, it was amusing internet blog fodder, but it's starting to no longer be funny.

So WTF? What's up with Britney Spears? When I worked for the music biz I used to see all her publicity photos. The earliest ones were the choicest: her handlers decide that this marginally-talented young teen could cultivate a fuck-me daddy persona completely inappropriate for her age and a hair short of child pornography. She becomes a mega-star for mobs of teenage girls desperately training at the Academy of Narcissism. Despite the money and the handlers she ends up acting like a white trash crack whore and melting down in a very public way. What did anyone expect? And America is entertained.

So WTF? What's up with Lindsay Lohan? An actually talented child actress apparently given too much independence much too soon imploding in an orgy of self-destructive addiction and attention-seeking. What did anyone expect? And America is enthralled.

So WTF? What's up with Jessica Simpson? She wonders if chicken of the sea is actually chicken, and people actually pay money for her records and movies?

So WTF? What's up with entitled heiresses like Nicole Ritchie with no apparent talents or social value and we need to be obsessed with her vomiting? And America eats it up.

So WTF with Angelina Jolie and Madonna and the baby-buying sprees in Africa? I actually love Madonna's music but really, is this a sick joke?

So WTF? What is up with Paris Hilton? An unattractive and spoiled debutante and dilettante, a true graduate of the Academy of Narcissism, breaks the law and begs not be sent to jail, where she is sentenced for 45 days. AND SHE SERVES THREE. Unimaginably wealthy, a convicted criminal, and she is then commuted to serving the rest of her sentence under mansion-arrest?

Really, so WTF! Prisoners serving 20 years only to have DNA evidence reveal their innocence? Political prisoners like the Cuban Five and Leonard Peltier and Mumia? People doing years for simple marijuana busts? Random middle-easterners caught up in Guantanamo and held incognito for 5 years? And Paris Hilton serves three days? And that's what America tunes into?

Something is not right. Assata Shakur for president. Cindy Sheehan for secretary of defense. Ariana Huffington for secretary of state. Angela Davis for elder states(wo)man. Lynne Stewart for attorney general. Sonia Sanchez for press secretary. Nikki Giovanni for secretary of education. These are beautiful important women we should pay attention to.

Forget the skanks. And Paris Hilton? Maybe there's a free cell in Abu Ghraib.