Major Story: Lohan in the Slammer, 2A

I have my Gainesville Sun delivered to me every morning, between 6 and 7. It comes rolled up in a plastic wrapper, landing in my driveway behind my car. This morning Melissa got up before me and brought the paper up to the front door before she left for errands. I got up, dressed, and set out for my nearest Starbucks to try to conjure up something for a blog article. I picked up the paper as I stepped out, hoping that today there would be something of interest to write about. When I arrived at Starbucks, I bought my usual tall "bold" roast coffee, pulled my still-wrapped Gainesville Sun out of my backpack along with my AlphaSmart word processor, and glanced at the headline on the upper-left corner of the front page. I may not take the paper out of the wrapper after all.

This is the news headline I saw: "Lindsay Lohan Begins Serving Sentence, 2A". Newspaper. News. Paper. O.K., I get the paper part, I put it down on the floor and my dog understands that as well. But news? Who is Lindsay Lohan? An actress, though not a very prominent one anymore, who for years has gotten herself into one legal predicament after another. I'm sorry that she's going to jail now. But does that rate as a news headline? NEWS??!!

.....Oh what the heck, I took the plunge and pulled the paper out of the plastic and opened it. Sure enough, on page 2, was a long article about Lindsay Lohan's ordeals. On the next page was a shorter article reporting that the jobless-benefits bill had advanced through the Senate, with the Democrats managing to break a GOP filibuster. Thumbing through to page 7, I discovered that Elena Kagan passed the Senate Judiciary Committee's vote on her nomination 13-6 (my Republican pal Lindsay Graham of South Carolina displaying his customary classy deference to tradition and voting "aye"), with the final debate and vote to go through to the Senate floor. Neither the jobless-benefits bill nor Kagan's committee vote had any front-page indicators. Nor did the lengthy, important article on 5A with the title "British PM says BP not behind bomber's release". Or how about the informative and interesting analysis in the adjacent article about how China has surpassed the U.S. as the world's largest energy consumer?

I suppose I should be happy that the Gainesville Sun at least did have the relevant news articles somewhere in their paper. And perhaps it isn't all their fault that they thought Lindsay Lohan might mean more to people at large than jobless benefits or a new Supreme Court Justice. Because, sadly, with people at large, the Sun probably sized up the situation correctly.