Over-Privileged Party Girl #1

As the year draws to its close,it's clear that the competition for most morale-lowering news report of the previous 12 months has been a hot one. Global warming, the war in Iraq and the crisis in Darfur have all done their bit - with Korean nuclear tests and Lebanon adding to the sense that long-range optimism may be a symptom of certifiable mental illness, rather than a viable way of looking at the world. But, although I know it doesn't really compete with any of these genuine crises, I couldn't help but feel sandbagged by the revelation, just before the contest closed, that Paris Hilton had topped the list of Google news searches for 2006. In fact, I didn't actually believe it the first time I read it. Surely there would be some qualifying detail further down pointing out that this reflected the figures only for news searches on over-privileged party girls. But no. Paris went head-to-head - if you'll forgive the term - with the most urgent issues of 2006 and came out on top. Strikingly the only entry in the top 10 that actually related to a specific news event was Hurricane Katrina, which came an unimpressive fifth after searches on Orlando Bloom, cancer and podcasting. If - as Google implies - this is a snapshot of the internet-connected zeitgeist, then the world is more frivolously dim-witted than we ever suspected. http://www.rense.com/general74/dch.htm

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