In case you missed it Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC finally got fed up with the standard tabloid trash that poses as journalistic news on most networks. As her two male cohorts jokingly chided her, she refused to do the Paris Hilton story as the lead piece on MSNBC News. You could tell that she was genuinely fed up. As she attempted to literally set the piece on fire it was taken away from her. The school-boy attitude of Joe Scarborough and the other male "journalist" was shameful as Mika tried to make a very good point. She got no support from the other two buffoons posing as journalists but MSNBC has been so inundated with positive emails supporting Mika that they have cut off any further postings to the story. Three cheers for Mika!

Why has no other network or journalist done this? Why does Paris continue to be the lead story? Magazine editors at US Weekly should also be applauded. They published or will publish this week's magazine without one word about Paris Hilton! The editor said, "...the story is finished..and so we are finished with Paris until a new story arises at some point in the future..."

It's one thing for the US Weekly's of the world, whether in print or on the airwaves, to spend so much time on Paris-like stories, it's another for so-called news shows and networks to be so obsessed. Leave that trash for the National Enquirer!

Network news has become info-tainment. They are slaves to ratings. Thus we have Fox News. They should not be allowed to use the word News in their name. That's false advertising. Sure, they have some news spots, but by and large they are tabloid tv and the propaganda ministry for the Bush administration. What networks should focus on is not ratings from all viewers, but viewers who are really interested in the news. So much of the American public has been dumbed-down by this society made in the image of the Fortune 500 mega-corporations that they can't put together an intelligent thought much less have real interest in hard news. We have raised a generation of consumers, not thinkers. It is this kind of populace that apathetically allows the Bush administration to lay waste to our core values all the while believing the double-speak lies that tell them that it's for their own safety and security of the nation.

I weep for the future of the U.S. unless this changes.