Idle threat of the week

Certainly since the advent of the printing press, and probably before that too, people have been making the news part of their life.

But what if there was no news? As we enter another week deeper into the legendary news drought of June 2008, this question takes on new weight.

With Britney nowhere to be found, and the Presidential election in a lull, newspapers, television and the Internet have been reduced to filling space with the antics of Amy Winehouse, a horrifically unappealing quasi-celebrity and Zimbabwe, a ridiculously insignificant quasi-nation.

Is it any coincidence that first Tim Russert and now George Carlin -- who both needed a steady stream of news to stay relevant -- picked this month to check out?

Maybe it's all just a fluke. Iowa is currently underwater, but nobody cares because the Iowans seem to be taking it all so well. Imagine the multi-media fuss if a less well-organized and understated American geographical region had been made to look like an ocean bed? And what if the situation in Iraq was to break out, one way or the other, of the cautiously optimistic ambiguity that has caused one of the biggest and most controversial news happening of the millennium to pretty much disappear from our radar?

Of course there is the bad economy narrative to be driven home. But nobody effected by these tough times is doing anything cool about it. So instead of stories of Bear Stearns executives strung up in public squares, and well-armed gangs of suburbanites fending off repo men, we get polls on how most American's think the nation is on the wrong track.

But there is hope. Today this happened:

Mind you this was a female dwarf, but one described by her neighbors as a "hustler and a player."

So there you have it. There will always be news as long as there are lady pimp dwarfs exploiting teenage runaways in our cities. And the death of all news is the Idle Threat of the Week for June 16-22.