The general public... on the whole, total morons

The title of this blog is a conclusion I've long been drawing, but it seems particularly topical today, when looking on the BBC news website, the announcement of Cheryl Cole's separation from master swordsman husband Ashley makes it as the third most important headline.  It's also the most viewed headline at the moment.

One of my favourite stories from my brief writing career is that of the agent who read my whole book, then the rewrite he requested, and concluded that unless I won Big Brother or scored a winning goal for England then there was little hope that he would represent me.  Celebrity books have long been trouncing any other genre in the bestsellers' list, with only the books of a popular vampire film and the customary Dan Brown and Harry Potter offerings making any sort of dent.

It's what we're up against in times when girls grow up wanting to be WAGs for a living, and the only way to forge a pop career is to cry on television sixteen times on the road to yet another reality expedition.  Getting cheated on is also good fodder - having exhausted the terminally ill with the Jade Goody horror show, now it's all about getting to the heart of an affair and taking a side.  We live in a country where Jordan and Peter Andre split up, and the public express their views on the matter by giving him number one albums and making her eat a plethora of animal testicles on national television.


Tiger Woods is now of public interest not for being an amazing golfer, but for putting his dick into a string of women.  He had to hold a press conference to publicly apologise for cheating on his wife.  WHY?  Surely he needs to apologise in private and get on with his life, without having to give the public what they so dearly want.

We're at a stage where this sort of information has been legally declared as the public's right to know.  Where sanctimonious wenches like Carol Malone and Lorraine Kelly can pass opinion on something that's probably hurting innocent people, as well as the celebrity perpertrator at the same time.  I'm sure if I'd been cheated on, I wouldn't like to become tabloid fodder by proxy.

Why do people care so much?  What is it that's so enticing about the little melodrama's of celebrity life that make people so captivated?  Why is it that Julian Clary can 'write' a novel and get published without so much of a thought, but it remains a struggle for many lesser-known but much better authors?  Why do we need a star studded song to make people donate to charity? We're meant to be intelligent human beings, but we're clearly going wrong somewhere.  This stuff takes people's attentions away from what's important in the world, which perhaps is part of the point if you subscribe to the '1984 is prophetic' school of thinking. 

The BBC puts it as top news because it is top news to a lot of people - it's more relevant than Afghanistan, the general election and the Iraq enquiry combined.  It means more to people than a car bomb in Northern Ireland.  Vultures, I swear.