I have to admit, I didn’t really pay that much attention to the just-completed Casey Anthony trial, and I never really understood all the time and attention the media and the cable networks paid it. I mean, what part of the trial was so unique? A young child dead, likely murdered? A young mother? A dysfunctional family? In Florida? Again, I ask the question: why all the fuss? At any given time across this country there are murder trials involving members of dysfunctional families all over the place. Put aside the tragedy of that cute little girl meeting some kind of horrible and untimely end, there’s just nothing there to warrant such a spectacle.

You see tragedies like this stuff all over the place. In America, life has never been cheaper.

But I’ve given up considering the media in this country worthy of any form of journalism. There’s no longer any real reporting of the facts, everything is just freakin’ spin and opinion. We have soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan at a rate that if John McCain were President all you’d hear from the media is the “quagmire” we’re in, in both places. With Barack Obama in the White House – nothing. We have an economy heading towards unmitigated disaster as we pile billions of dollars upon our $1.6 trillion debt, and few in Washington have the courage to tell the American people we can no longer afford the continued expansion of the federal government and entitlement programs that are driving us towards a disaster of biblical proportions. The country can’t protect it’s own borders, but our TSA can search the private recesses of children and the incontinent elderly.

But the media swarms all over the release of Sarah Palin’s e-mails while she was Governor of Alaska.

There’s something completely out of whack in this country – I’m just trying to figure out if the media are leading the way to our disintegration as a nation and our economic demise, or whether they’re just following the lead of a people where the majority would rather watch reality TV shows that celebrate family and individual dysfunction and depravity. Don’t believe me? Take a look at most any channel’s program line-up on any given night.

And maybe there’s your reason for the media’s fascination over Casey Anthony, a troubled young woman from a dysfunctional family, with a young child dead and no one knows why. Maybe the media knows her trial is a microcosm of what life in America has come to.