But we all know what Tom Cruise said, or who Britney is snogging.

This is shameful.

The New York Times Op-Ed, Nicholas Kristof says:
"Some of us in the news media have been hounding President Bush for his shameful passivity in the face of genocide in Darfur. More than two years have passed since the beginning of what Mr. Bush acknowledges is the first genocide of the 21st century, yet Mr. Bush barely manages to get the word "Darfur" out of his mouth. Still, it seems hypocritical of me to rage about Mr. Bush's negligence, when my own beloved institution - the American media - has been at least as passive as Mr. Bush.

If only Michael Jackson's trial had been held in Darfur. Last month, CNN, Fox News, NBC, MSNBC, ABC and CBS collectively ran 55 times as many stories about Michael Jackson as they ran about genocide in Darfur."

I say:
At least 200,000 people murdered, and millions displaced, raped, tortured...but we are all so tuned in to our "reality" shows that actual reality doesn't even register on our radar. We are sheeple. We will focus on whatever is flashed in our face with the brightest lights and most cleavage.

And what really makes my blood curdle is that the most popular shows on TV are the ones that trade on humiliation. Let's watch 5 women compete for 1 man and see which one cries. Let's watch 10 fat people starve themselves and run on a treadmill 5 hours a day to lose the most weight in the least possible amount of time, like a bunch of macabre human hamsters. It's like a big ole circus freak show. Jerry Springer is no longer an anomaly. The lowest common denominator has become the thing we aspire to. I want to vomit.

Now, wtf am I going to do about Darfur? I don't know. Probably just blog about it. But at least that's one voice.