Media's problem isn't ideology, it's an obsession with non-news news

"The people have a right to know everything about everyone all the time."
-- RICHARD THORNBURG, "Die Hard 2"

 There are very few moments in the first two "Die Hard" movies more viscerally satisfying to the audience than when Bonnie Bedelia cuts loose on the media character played by William Atherton.

In the first movie, he gets punched in the mouth. In the second, he's tasered. Both times, the audience just loves it.

There are few people in the world more annoying these days than the self-righteous, blow-tried television reporters blathering about the public's "right to know."


We have strayed so far from the real meaning of journalism in the last 30 years that we have somehow decided it's more important to know the real details of the latest Kardashian embarrassment than what's really going on in the world.

What happened in the Iran-Contra scandal was much more significant than what happened between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, but one story was boring and the other was sexy. Sex sells. So does schadenfreude.

If you're not familiar with the German word, it means experiencing pleasure at the pain other people are suffering.

When we see the rare occasion in which a billionaire goes to jail, we thrill at it whether it affects our life in any positive way or not. I'm as guilty as anyone.

I may not care what's going on with Caitlyn Jenner or Tom Brady, but tell me something juicy about someone I don't like, and I can get as schadenfreudy as the next guy.

What? Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are going to Maine to get married? And Ann Coulter is the Best Man?

What happened to us?

I think it started about 35 years ago, and I think I can actually pinpoint the event that started it.

On March 4, 1974, a magazine debuted with Mia Farrow on the cover, a magazine that also contained articles about Gloria Vanderbilt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and wives of Vietnam veterans missing in action.

It was called People. And all of a sudden, instead of having to do something to be in the news, you only had to be someone. You didn't even have to be someone good, all you needed was to be someone interesting.

And before we knew it, there were more magazines, shows like "Entertainment Tonight" and Websites showing all sorts of pictures of all sorts of people. The unexamined life had truly not become worth living.

But dammit, I never needed to know that Paris Hilton has a raging case of herpes, or that Britney Spears is one of the craziest people on the planet. I couldn't care less if Tiger Woods has a happy marriage and Ellen DeGeneres doesn't, and if I never hear the name Lindsey Lohan for the rest of my life it will be too soon.

Of course the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves. If no one bought People, it would go out of business. If no one watched Entertainment Tonight, it would go off the air. And if no one visited Perez-Hilton's Website, he'd be just another citizen of West Hollywood.

The late Alice Roosevelt Longworth may have been the first to admit to schadenfreude when she made her famous statement "If you don't have anything nice to say about someone, come sit next to me."

Yep, that's us.