by Trisha Orlando

Created on: July 20, 2010

MEL GIBSON IS DEAD. Those words were the number one search terms on Google this week. With 25,300,000 results in 0.16 seconds, it makes him the most talked about undead person of the week.

While speculation runs rampant that it is Mr. Gibson's career that is dead and not the actual human, one has to wonder at what point did the media decide that celebrities personal lives were more important than actual events pertaining to, oh I don't know, maybe current events such as the flooding that is washing out Nashville, the controversial smoking bans being enacted allover the "Land of the Free", or the whereabouts of the missing children?

Here's some breaking news, people. Mel Gibson is not the only person on the face of the earth to thrown an alcohol-induced rant and rave. Nor is he the first. How do we even know he was intocicated at the time, as the media is reporting? Where they there, did they see him consume alcohol? Or is this just a man who has had it with a conniving woman and finally blew a gasket?

The only thing worse than a media who is worse than a nosy neighbor is the people who eat this stuff up. Remember Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched? See would see part of what was going on in the Stevens house and then report it back to her husband who thought surely, Mrs. Kravitz had gone crazy. Most viewers probably felt that Mrs. Kravitz should be minding her own business but yet found it comical. She made an idiot out of herself. As does the media that spies on and reports the happenings of the personal lives of the media.

The media is like your best friend in high school who you told all your secrets to and then found out the friend had been blabbing it all over town, making a mockery of you. The media coodles the celebs when they are in good times and bashes them when they can get their hands on any dirt. It's all about the mighty advertising dollar. Who can get it and how much can they squeeze out of it. The stains of yellow journalism are only covered up by the degree of dirt that can be dug up.

The media is supposed to be our most trusted source in news. Maybe we need to redefine the word NEWS for them. Exposing Mel or Tiger's "real life" side is not NEWS. Finding out what happened to Haleigh Cummings, who is still missing after a year, is newsworthy. Wouldn't it be more productive and COMMUNITY SERVICE ORIENTED to put the millions of dollars of their resources into finding out if Haleigh is dead or alive?

Headline News last week replayed the infamous Mel Gibson tapes almost non-stop for three hours during their programming between 5-8 p.m. During that same time slot, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children could have probably used that media attention more productively. The mother and father of missing child Kyron Horman could have used some help locating their missing 7 year old son.

Mel is probably laughing all the way to the bank because as  Brendan Behan
Irish author & dramatist (1923 - 1964) said "no publicity is bad publicity except your own obituary" and Mel knows he isn't dead.

Learn more about this author, Trisha Orlando.
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