Thankfully, the Oscars are over with, and hopefully, all the overwrought, overblown, and over-done coverage of Hollywood celebrities in our over-saturated media environment. “Why’s Britney gone over the deep end?” “What was Angelina Jolie‘s phone bill last month?” “Say, aren’t Jennifer Aniston‘s boobs hanging 2 inches lower than they were last year?” “Nicholas Cage has a new pet iguana?” “Is that a varicose vein on Kate Hudson‘s lower shin?” The mind boggles. I mean, even if you’re into movies, does anyone really care or need to know about this stuff? And, even more importantly, why does every time one of these pampered, self-absorbed, limousine liberals open their mouths about the latest cause de célibrité (three years ago it was Bush-bashing, two years ago it was Darfur, this year it’s, of course, “global warming”), the media breathlessly awaits every morsel of wisdom from the “Gospel According to Hollywood”?

Why does the media (and, I’m guessing, millions of people out there, for if the people didn’t crave it, the media wouldn’t feed it) care so much about, and publicize so broadly what actors and musicians think? These clowns may have worked hard to get where they are because of some talent (or supposed talent) they possess, but simply because someone can read lines from another’s script and emote for the camera, or play a guitar while singing on-key, why should anything they blabber to the media be any more sage or viable than that expressed by you, me, the check-out girl at the supermarket, or Carmelo my landscaper.

(This has never been more true than when it comes to this seemingly new-found celebrity obsession with “global warming” and the latest round of headlines the so-called “experts” have been screaming about. And now we have an “all-star” group of celebrities and musicians saying we’ve only got ten years to save the planet, and Al Gore organizing benefit concerts? Madre di Dios!.)

Is it that our lives are so depressingly ordinary and boring that we need celebrities to fill some unfulfilled vacuum? I know this is nothing new – the “yellow journalism” rags of the 19th and early 20th century were just as audacious in the kinds of stories they would dream up, and people just as thirsty for the kind of swill they’d print. Perhaps it’s just that in our media-saturated culture there’s just so much more of it, from so many different sources.

But that doesn’t mean we should have to jump simply because Jessica Simpson thinks the temperature of her swimming pool is running hotter this year than last, or Barbra Streisand sees some doctored photograph of polar bears stranded on ice or Bono one of those Christian Children’s Fund commercials while eating his lobster thermidor. Laura Ingraham used her saying, “shut up and sing!” to push her best-selling book; on this Oscar night, while we all recover from our self-imposed celebrity stupor, I would add to that, “shut up and act!’.