Experts have long said a person’s checkbook is the window to his or her soul.
Okay, maybe not the soul—but it does reveal, at the very least, what people consider important.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that an animal lover will typically spend money on pampering his favorite pet. A sports enthusiast: athletic apparel. Michael Vick: dog toys. A writer: comfortable sitting clothes.
But what if a sneak peek into someone’s billing history is not exactly accessible, not to mention ill-mannered?
The next best thing, and arguably the easiest, is to view the top Internet search engine queries for Google.
This time last year, Google’s archives indicate that the No. 1 and 2 news searches gracing the search bar were Paris Hilton and Orlando Bloom, respectively.
Also making the list were cancer, podcasting, the NFL draft, autism, bankruptcy, Celebrity Big Brother, Martina Hingis and Hurricane Katrina.
But what does this say about what Americans consider important?
If there is intelligent life outside the confines of Earth’s own atmosphere, Americans appear to be obsessed with the lives of people who murmur things along the lines of “that’s hot,” and they also enjoy watching grown men pummel one another over the possession of a leather ball roughly only a foot in length.
Hardly anything seriously construed as newsworthy.
Or are they?
Presently, the media make it all the more possible for the general public to gain inside access to the private lives of these celebrities that previous generations were not privy to. As non-newsworthy as Angelina Jolie’s latest adoption is, it never fails to make headlines.
Of course, such attention is nothing new. The author of the biblical text Ecclesiastes says that unimportance is continuously celebrated while things of relevance are hardly given a second thought.
Maybe this is why one-fifth of Americans cannot locate the U.S. on a world map. Or even more frightening, why a Miss Teen North Carolina cannot give a sensible answer as to why that one-fifth of Americans cannot locate the U.S. on a world map.
The only effective way to combat insignificant news from being broadcast and printed for the public’s preying eyes is to simply quit doing so. But it is a vicious cycle of supply and demand. The public demands news of Paris Hilton’s latest antics, so the media supplies it.
Perhaps it is time for major news outlets to deviate from shedding light on Hollywood stories of love and war.
Justin Timberlake may be bringing sexy back, but the general public’s inability to adequately grasp the goings on of the world is anything but.
