The title of this post in the Daily Mail – “When we elevated fatuous bits of female fluff to celebrity status” – hits directly on something I wondered about when I caught about thirty seconds of the Teela Tequila (?) or Kim Kardashian show or some such trifle the other day.

The drip-drip effect of all these empty-heads being paraded before us as beacons of success is that, among women of all ages, even those of us in our 40s who should know better, it is now no longer seen as ironic to be interested in whether or not Kylie has had a face lift, or Lindsay Lohan has or has not checked out of rehab, or totalled her car while drink driving. Or Sienna Miller has said yes or no to Rhys Ifans, or Jennifer Lopez has piled on the pregnancy pounds.
Thanks to last year’s bombardment of the banal, to know and care about these people is now seen as normal.

They’re the flip side of the “Simpson Trial” coin, really; it’s a short leap from the trivialization of murder to the significantization (I know, it’s not a word. Or is it?) of walking wastes of public attention span like Nicole Ritchie.

But Liz Jones notes that there’s hope:

And finally and most commendably the American news anchor Mika Brzezinski, for shredding her script in anger at being ordered to lead a bulletin with yet another Paris Hilton story – a liberating act tantamount to burning her bra, surely?