Surely There Were Other Things That Happened This Weekend

I woke up on Saturday morning and flipped through the channels, stopping on the news channels expecting to see some serious news, in part because of the impending second attempt by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to get a cloture vote through the Senate to allow debate on the Iraq War. However, I was bombarded with stories about Britney Spears' new hairdo (or undo) that I guess the media thought was so much more important.

Then, I came home yesterday evening after running some errands and I turned it to MSNBC to catch the news. Sure enough, it merited attention on three of the four major shows on the network (The exception being Hardball with Chris Matthews.), with Tucker Carlson devoting several minutes to the story, and bringing on Dr. Keith Adlow (who, ironically, was also bald as a cueball) to talk about how this was a signal of a mental breakdown, Keith Olbermann at least waiting until the end of his show, where he usually dumps soft news, aka "stories my producers made me do" and Joe Scarborough taking up about half of his show, but maybe that was because he got an exclusive with the woman who owned the salon where Britney Spears shaved her head because the owner refused to do it. (btw, for some reason, every time I go to the barber, the barber cuts my hair much shorter than I ask, so why is it that this industry can't give people what they want?)

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but haven't there been far worse cries for help from Britney Spears over the last three years? Personally, I think this is tame compared to driving with her son on her lap down the freeway, but I could be wrong. Then again, I think she could have looked much worse without hair. Still, there were a lot of things that happened this weekend that really should have gotten the public's attention. For example, there was the vote on cloture this Saturday, which fell four votes short (although with the improved health of Senator Tim Johnson [D-SD] he may get to 57 soon) and the successful effort by House Democrats on Friday to pass a resolution condemning the escalation of the Iraq War.

Or, if politics isn't your cup of tea (although if it isn't, why are you here?), there is the profoundly shocking story of a man who was mummified because he died while watching TV and no one noticed him for a year, despite the fact that his TV was on the whole time, and his bills and mail were piling up in his mailbox. While this may not seem to be a very important story, it is certainly more important as a symbol of a lack of concern about the community that would allow someone to be dead for over a year without anyone seeming to care enough to check on him.