The deaths of Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, and Michael Jackson last week made me think about the nature of celebrity in modern day America. Farrah Fawcett gained fame through a mediocre television series, a slightly risqué poster, and a marriage to a second rate action star. Ed McMahon achieved great fame as Johnny Carson’s “sidekick” and, in his later years, as a pitchman selling insurance for older Americans. And Michael Jackson, the one truly gifted performer of the three, gained international fame for his innovative music and choreography and notoriety for his remarkable encounters with plastic surgery and his legal troubles arising from his “sleepovers” with children.

In a week during which young Iranian pro-democracy protesters were brutally attacked and killed, in which North Korea continued to menace the world with its nuclear weapons and an insane foreign policy, and in which Congress was preparing to radically transform American health care, the media was dominated by stories of the deaths of Farrah, Ed and Michael. What is it about the nature of celebrity in the United States today that makes people forget everything except the lives and deaths of celebrities?

By asking this question I do not mean to disparage the lives or deaths of the three. I, like most American men of a certain age, was once captivated by Farrah Fawcett’s beauty. I laughed along with millions of others at Ed McMahon’s banter with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, and I believe that Michael Jackson’s musical talent put him in the pantheon of American popular entertainers. But, this being said, were these three people who changed people’s lives so much for the better that the national media should devote the majority of its time to reviewing their lives and commenting on their deaths?

Farrah Fawcett was not Helen Keller nor Eleanor Roosevelt. Ed McMahon was not Ernest Hemingway nor G.B. Shaw. And Michael Jackson, as great an entertainer as he was, was not Martin Luther King nor George Washington Carver. Their deaths are sad, even tragic. But their lives were devoted to entertainment, a devotion for which they were richly rewarded. As entertainers they were famous but none of them led exemplary lives or lives devoted to the betterment of the world.

Entertainers live in the public eye. Increasingly they not only entertain us through their performances but, as a result of 24/7 media coverage, they entertain simply by living the often outrageous lives those in Hollywood live. I have no problem with that. But it seems to me that our news media has become seduced by celebrity.

The old idea of “hard” news has grown obsolete. Today’s news is, rather, “infotainment.” Americans would rather hear about celebrities’ lives and deaths than about nuclear proliferation, Islamic extremism, or the boring but absolutely vital details of health care legislation. As a result, the average American knows more about reality show contestants than reality. To me this is the real tragedy that the media should cover.