Focusing on celebrity gossip is a waste of time and shows us how skewed our priorities are.

In the news today, among political remarks, NHL and NFL lockout rants and whatever Apple has to say: “Kristen Stewart in Short Shorts.” And guess what, guys. She paired the shorts with a nude and black-colored top and black patent leather shoes. Additionally, her relationship with Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson has been rekindled, if anyone cares.
I just want to thank ABCNews.com for sharing this fascinating information with all of us. News like that is definitely too big of a deal to leave out, I know.
In all seriousness, ABC, are stories like this necessary? I think not.
A similar news article that I had stumbled across online a few weeks ago displayed a bold headline that mentioned both “9/11” and “Kardashian.”
Turns out, while every other major news network paused their scheduled programs to air the moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. in remembrance of the 2001 attacks, NBC decided that it was OK to just go ahead and completely skip over the tribute and continue the “Today Show” airing of a story on Kardashian mom Kris Jenner’s breast augmentation.
More than one person at NBC must have thought this was fine because the network actually went through with it. After intense criticism, the network hardly apologized, stating that NBC had already devoted a significant amount of airtime to anniversary events and that acknowledging the national moment of silence “wasn’t their tradition” like all of the other major news stations, and an apology was therefore unnecessary.
What completely blows my mind more than NBC’s distasteful actions is the fact that people actually care about Kris Jenner’s personal life choice to get implant replacements, Kristen Stewart’s outfits, that Miley Cyrus cut her hair, or that Justin Bieber is writing a book. Hundreds and thousands of women get breast implants every year, we all wear clothes, everyone cuts their hair, and an uncountable number of people write books.
Looks like we have a problem: America is altogether unhealthily obsessed with celebrities. We stalk them on Twitter like we know them and take humiliating pictures of them for our own enjoyment. We spend our hard-earned money on perfume, clothes, shoes and other items solely because their names are on them.
Our priorities are all wrong.
When Neil Armstrong passed away recently, coverage of the story and his life were rather limited. I don’t even think I found out until a day later. With that, NBCNews.com actually even managed to screw up big time on one of their article headlines. The title read, “Astronaut Neil Young, first man to walk on the moon, dies at age 82.” I could be wrong, but I’m pretty positive that Neil Young is still alive and is most certainly not an astronaut. News networks were apparently broadcasting their usual jail documentaries and re-run interviews a few hours after the news broke, according to the Huffington Post.
But when news broke of Michael Jackson’s death back in 2009 however, the media went nuts. The King of Pop made headlines every week for a long while. Whitney Houston’s death in February gained significant coverage as well.  In any case, the man who took one “giant leap for mankind” should have been celebrated just a little bit more.
The media clearly doesn’t have their priorities straight if they think Kris Jenner’s implants are more important than a remembrance service for the victims of Sept. 11, or that Neil Armstrong deserves less air-time than a documentary about criminals in jail and a couple of celebrities.
Let’s talk about something that matters instead of who is dating who, who wore what, or the latest Hollywood scandal. A lot of the gossip knowledge fed to us by the media is useless, and we don’t need to be wasting our time hearing the nonsense.
As they say, “Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about other people.”