A week or so ago as my posse of co-workers were debating the paternity of Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter, I told them about how much it bothers me when our entire country becomes obsessed with some stupid celebrity hooha.

I tell them how of all the things that struck me about post-9/11 TV one of the things Jay Leno said when the Tonight Show finally has stayed with me. He talked about how only a week (or whatever it was) ago the biggest concern of our nation was that Anne Heche was crazy. It was all over the news and in the papers and what not.

They kind of shook their heads, having grown immune to my weird rants. But I carried on. I told them how it makes me nervous when our entire country becomes so seemingly obsessed with something inane, whether it’s Britney’s shaved head, Anna Nicole’s kid, or Don Imus being a jackass.

It always seems to me that when we, as a nation, reach the very pinnacle of inanity something like 32 people shot on the campus of Virginia Tech comes and smacks us in the face.

Of course, I am not insinuating that there was anything we could have done to prevent what happened yesterday (well, except for gun control but I am not about to tackle that subject right now) or that we deserve this kind of tragedy. But these sorts of huge tragedies seem like some sort of karmic payback for our exceedingly vapid existences. It’s as though the universe was like, “yeah those silly Americans don’t seem to have enough to worry about. Chew on this suckers.”

So here I sit, trying to come up with a conclusion to express my sorrow or my outrage or whatever it is I’m feeling right now, and I can’t think of anything. I guess I’m just hopeful in the face of such a disaster that maybe this time our collective conscious will continue to focus on things that really matter, and not devolve back into celebrity-obsessed automatons wondering what Brit will shave next.