Celebrities We're Tired of Hearing About: David Loftus

What qualifies as “newsworthy” depends on which criteria one applies. Will further knowledge of these people enable us to be better citizens or more ethical individuals? Have these luminaries done anything worthy of our attention? Do any of them matter?

The answer in all cases is probably not. On the other hand, if millions of Americans continue to watch and discuss these clowns, then there’s a sense in which they are newsworthy, if only in the sense that they help to keep turning the great Nielsen-ratings-and-corporate-advertising carousel. And that’s all that counts for so much television “news” programming and pop cultural magazine sales.

As a sometime elected official, Palin might have a claim on our attention, although her behavior since the election (and even, to some extent, during it) has made her steadily less relevant. I’m of two minds about her, actually, because she’s so clumsy and hilarious that she provides dependable entertainment, unlike the others, who are mostly just sad. And the longer she stretches out a 15 minutes of fame she never really merited in the first place, the more I suspect it benefits the Democratic Party ... which, lord knows, has done little to recommend itself on its own merits of late.

Personally, I can’t say I’m “tired” of hearing about these people because I don’t watch television or read any gossip magazines, so I find them fairly easy to avoid. They’re a very dull roar on my distant horizon. It’s just a shame too many other Americans seem to think it’s worth their valuable time to keep looking, even if it’s to summon up a feeling of superior contempt.