A professional comedy writer named Nick Malis runs a chintzy blog called "Cute things falling asleep" (cutethingsfallingasleep.org). It looks to be using a stock Blogger template and it consists of little more than a small number of videos showing things like puppies and cats... falling asleep. And, Malis didn't even make the videos himself but simply scanned Youtube for them. Despite all that, it's currently getting around 68,000 visits per day.

And, I'm only partially joking about things like this showing what's wrong with the U.S. Take a look at the "Press" sidebar, where he's listed all the MSM organizations that have covered his site: CNN, Time Magazine, NPR, and on and on. Rather than doing real investigative journalism or having balanced discussions of policy matters, they highlighted things like that site. As a sure sign of just how bad things are, Andrew Sullivan posted about it under the title "Mental Health Break" (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/12/mental-healt-10.html). I guess even those who are completely delusional have to take a break once in a while.

Now, certainly, we all need entertainment and charming diversions every once in a while. But, when that's about all we get people might want to demand more than bread and circuses.