What's Wrong With America?

So I'm sitting in the breakfast room at a hotel in New York while on a business trip. I'm watching CNN's morning news program to find out what's going on in the world. It's not E! It's not MTV. It's not O. It's not the local show....It's CN frikkin N. A crawler starts across the bottom while Robin (the host) is lamely bantering with the national weather man (who gives such general information it's useless..."somewhere in the US today (dramatic pause) it will RAIN" - Gee. Thanks !) Anyway, back to the crawler. I get a little excited. Maybe my company stock exploded yesterday. Maybe Jerome Bettis decided not to retire. Maybe Al Franken got hit by a bus! No...the crawler starts off "Madonna.......". Oh no, did she die? She can't die. "Madonna's daughter.....". Oh no, this would be a tragedy if her 9 year old died. And yes, when I see a crawler on CNN that starts out "Milton Berle...." it usually ends "died today". Recently we've had "Bob Denver....." and "The Munster's Al 'Grandpa' Lewis....." type crawlers that ended with "died today." "Madonna's daughter Lourdes asks mom if she's gay." I'm not kidding. That was the crawler. No follow-up. No mention of the story by the host. One sentence. Is this what Americans care about? Is this important enough to run a crawler on CNN? Let's put this in context of how it appeared on the crawler: "14 die in Iraq car bomb......Iran warns US of intervention.....RIM settles Blackberry case......Madonna's daughter Lourdes asks mom if she's gay........Patriot Act is renewed" Wow. I was surprised that wasn't followed up with other things that affect my life much in the same way: "Oscar Winner Reese Witherspoon does not tip mailman for Christmas......Broccolli gives Elton John gas......John Travolta's head now a good sized pumpkin......Cruise "Broken" that he wasn't offered chance to kiss Heath" Well, that last one might have been real....or I was just dreaming. Anyway......Oh yeah, Who gives a rat's ass what Lourdes asks her mother? The crawler should have read "Madonna's daughter Lourdes asks mom why the frig she named her Lourdes". At least I would have gotten a laugh out of that instead of slowly shaking my head and returning to my lousy free breakfast.