>A while back, a pro basketball player (Charles Barkley) said something to the effect of, "I'm not a role model....you want a role model? Be a role model to your kids". I think he's half-right, but the fact is that these players wouldn't be making as much $$$ without the support of idolizing young fans. So I find it sad that teens feel they have to feed the machine on topics like this...

Even more sad is the whole vicarious life through the celebrity culture. Now that the machinery is in place, it can't be stopped, it will spawn new content-free personae to be fed to the young as idols, roll models (I stole this pun), and something to talk about whenever real life runs out of content. If nobody cared whether Brittney Lohan was pregnant, in rehab or shaved her head again, nobody would buy the papers which don't have anything else to say. If nobody was buying such papers, they wouldn't be published. If they weren't published, if the whole celebrity industry went out of business, maybe there'd be time to notice the roses. And to start having a life (not counting the dozen extra lives one wins in a game by cheating).