What's really important

You can tell Americans want more than just hard news out of their media. Just take a look at the tail end of this Yahoo! news story:

"The Obamas are deciding between a labradoodle or a Portuguese water hound puppy, in the search for an appropriate pet for their daughters, ages 7 and 10. Obama said they're ready to start visiting shelters."

Forget the spiraling deficit or the insanely large bailout for failing banks. This is the meat of what we want, and it turns out that it's dog meat. Yes, that's right, knowing exactly what breed of canine the Obamas will get for the White House is what this country needs right now.

Why do we care about this fluff? Good question. My guess is that it's somewhere in between news about celebrities and feel-good stories about people that have done good deeds all their lives. It's not necessarily what many might think of news, but we want to talk about famous pets and fuzzy, wuzzly things so this meets the mark.

And, of course, it beats the hell out of talking about how all our 401k's have blown up in the past year.