The Post Express

In an effort to stay in front of the curve, or better put, to desperately seek to stay "hip" in the DC scene, I've started reading the Post Express everyday. The Express is the free version of the Washington Post that is available at just about every bus stop and metro station in greater DC. It's phenomenal because it gives you the headline news version of the top events of the day. I supplement it with CNN, SI and Drudge at lunch and then I know what's going on in the world or at least I can pretend like I do which is more important than anything else.

It typically takes me the whole ride in on the bus to read most of the stories in the Express, minus the lifestyle section because frankly I could honestly care less about women's fashion, crappy local bands, and what was today's topic--oh yeah the "slim suit." I don't even know what that is, but I'm sure it was terrible. The last couple of pages are the human interest stories and celebrity gossip. That section gets read when I hit the last two stops before mine and I'm always left with the same thought...who cares about celebrities?

The Express is top quality because the headlines for the one or two paragraph blurbs about Justin, Nicole or Paris are always a touch condescending and normally pretty damn funny. The fact remains . . . why do these people even deserve one or two paragraphs? I struggle to find one thing that 99% of celebrities do to provide value to anyone's life. There are exceptions but for the large part the only thing a celebrity does that makes them interesting to me is act or perform. It's just a shame that all the junk that ends up in the newspapers and on tv has nothing to do with their acting or performing and everything to do with the rest of the train wreck they call their lives (i.e. that Lindsay chick who has been in-and-out of rehab).

I think if we paid as much attention to the in-work lives of our elected officials and decisionmakers as we did to the out-of-work lives of irrelevant celebrities there would be a heck of a lot more accountability for bad or poor decisions. But why should we worry about the economy, foreign policy and other pertinent social issues when we can spend our time worrying about who said what on Grey's Anatomy?