celeb gossip DRIVES ME CRAZY

The week’s big break up: Britney Spears and Kevin Federline, or President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld?

Seeing as celebrity gossip is now considered newsworthy- included in both TV and print media, along with countless Internet pages and blogs devoted entirely to celebrity hearsay- it came as no surprise that on Wednesday, I had learned of the Spears-Federline split before finding out about Rumsfeld’s resignation as Secretary of Defense.

A Hollywood starlet was quickly stealing a well-known politician's spotlight, despite the fact that mid-term elections were held only a day before. This was supposed to be a week filled with political debates, professional analysts, and election coverage; citizens voted on Tuesday and then anxiously tuned into the local or national news stations for the election results.

However, as soon as the election coverage was winding down (actual winners wouldn’t be announced until the following day), several news stations quickly shifted to the “breaking news” from Hollywood. And this was just Tuesday night… Although Rumsfeld resigned the following day, the news media was still fixated on frivolous Hollywood happenings rather than White House politics.

By Wednesday, major TV networks’ newscasts that typically focused on current political and economical events were instead resembling the “ten to the hour, every hour” newscast format found on MTV: a brief up-date of current events that, coincidently, involve celebrities (i.e., Spears and Federline). Talk-radio personalities shared their thoughts and opinions about Britney and Kevin’s inevitable split and prenuptial agreement, with little or no mention of the election result and correspondingly, Rumsfeld’s decision to step down.

Eventually, come Wednesday afternoon, I was properly informed of Rumsfeld’s resignation by CNN (of course), since they designate most Hollywood tittle-tattle to the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen… And since CNN is 24-hours continuous news coverage, Rumsfeld’s split from the Bush administration was the latest, leaving Britney’s Tuesday night divorce filing as so 15 minutes ago.