Let's hear it for tabloids

This may be the best response I've seen yet to the media's obsession with Reverend Wright: a writer for Us Weekly looks at the coverage and relishes the fact that, at Us, they're more objective about this kind of nonsense.

Us has been accused of distracting people from the "Important Issues" and the talking heads love to tut-tut about how attention to celebrity gossip is causing the great dumbing-down of American society. But after weeks of watching the mainstream news media's coverage of the Reverend Wright controversy, I'm just
fine sticking to the Brangelina beat.

Piling on the irony, she points out some flaws in the coverage that I haven't seen anywhere else:

At Us we know that every celebrity breakup has two sides - yet the news media failed to apply that same basic due diligence to the Wright story. Did no one think to interview any of the other parishioners of Trinity United Church? Are we to assume that all 10,000 of them are America-hating racists? Let's not forget that Wright was at one point deemed a nationally recognized, legitimate spiritual figure. (You know, the sort of person you would invite to the White House for a prayer breakfast with other national religious figures if you were in the need of PR redemption after a sex scandal with a certain intern named Monica.)

I try to resist criticizing the mainstream media, because it has become almost a cliche. But Lara Cohen nails something here. You know it's getting bad when a purveyor of gossip is critical of the press for its lack of intellectual discipline.