Instead of a knee-jerk reaction to an article about a celebrity or a near-crazed attack on the author, I thought it might be nice for Salon and Ms. Traister to know that at least one reader got it and feels better off for having actually read the article. Perhaps not assuming idiocy or character malformation on the part of the author allowed me to better access her words. Or maybe accepting that celebrities, like it or not, shape our culture and understanding that their manipulation of our media is, at the very least, worthy of discussion did the trick.

At any rate, an excellent article on the predominant pop culture storyline of 2005. My impression is that Salon exists to help its readers better understand the world around them, and this article definitely succeeds on that count alone. And, after reading it, I still have plenty of brain cells left over for ultramercials and stories about evil Republicans.

WTF Salon?

Did I really just flip through two pages of this pointless posturing to post an e-mail about how dissappointing this article was?

And this after the young David Amsden's essay, with young Master David's arrogant 20something attitude of knowing everything there is to know about psychotropic drugs because he once dealt Ritalin to college students drivel made me sigh and wonder what was up at Salon.

Is this a bad side effect of Thanksgiving week? We get drivel?

On the evening of the November 8 US elections there was certainly too much Aniston. I was on vacation in California and I looked on my hotel TV for news of Arnie's eight propositions: exit polls, discussions, predictions, results...anything. There was none and no other news either that I could find. On CNN - I thought it was a 24 hour news channel? - was a vacuous interview with the ubiqitous Jennifer that seemed to last all evening.

In the end Arnie lost all eight, while Democratic governors won in Virginia and New Jersey. Hurrah! Was every American really more interested in Aniston? Surely not.

Jerry

Why is it that Salon readers are so fixated with the the essay, 'Our Jennifer fixation?' What is it that drives them to such disdain for an analysis of the celebrity of, well, a celebrity?

We just don't care that much, and haven't the tabloids (and a couple of other magazines) given us more than we need already? Isn't asking why we're so hung up on JA like asking why babies eat so much applesauce? Well, if it's getting spoonfed to you on tv and in print, people will respond, but jeebus, can't Salon realize that real grown-ups are maybe here for a more complex menu than strained peas and carrots?

I have a feeling that David Horowitz's term didn't last long at Salon because his column eventually degenerated into Self Indulgent Drivel (SID). Traister's material started at the SID level and has slowly crumbled its way into narcissistic self importance with a side dish of trivial.

You can keep promoting her material to Salon's front page at your peril. There are memberships on the line, and you should really consider putting your best foot forward.

Are we supposed to be offended that Anniston's angst over her breakup has followed pretty much the pattern that anyone else's, other than that it has been unwrapped for us in national magazines. How crafty of her and her "master publicist" ... how positively riveting for Salon to deconstruct it ... But it does seem to me to be much easier to apply Occam's Razor, look for the simplest explanation. She's really famous and probably pretty normal, by Hollywood standards; so we get fed, ad infinitum, the same story we'd get if it was an actual girl friend who went through a break-up, only it's entirely vicarious and hurts less. Tastes great, less filling, etc. The whole story could be done in a 30-second commercial ... and despite the media, writing this letter has taken more of my time than I've spent paying attention to Anniston in 2005.

I certainly don't have an Aniston fixation - I never watched "Friends" and while I have a general sympathy for any person betrayed by his/her spouse, that's about it. I see the value of having the occasional "fluff piece" in Salon, so I'm not that worked up about this article on those grounds, either. What I do find most interesting, however, is what the article says about the cultural preoccupations of Americans. After 9-11, many Americans were asking "why do they hate us?" At the time, this may have been a reasonable question (in some ways); Al Qaeda had been operating under the radar of even many well-informed people. Today, after tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in Iraq by American weaponry, when the victims of Hurricane Katrina are being evicted from their hotel rooms, when the US government is finding new ways to cut welfare, sanction torture and violate civil rights - the story of the year is Jennifer Aniston? The most disturbing thing is that this may be a correct assessment of the situation, at least for most Americans. When the next international or domestic social catastrophe occurs, how many Americans will be caught by surprise?

It is amazing that the one thing always targeted at those who we believe to be behind the war and everything else that has gone wrong with America and the world, is the same thing that is lacking with, surprisingly (for me at least), many a Salon reader. Tolerance people. Most people who choose Salon are quite aware of what is happening in the news, this is also real news for some (many?)people. Perhaps a step towards understanding, instead of just dissmissing a large portion of the population as idiots for caring about the more trivial, would give insight as to why people prefer to hide under the unbrella of celebrity stories/lies/fanatacism -pick your fancy- than face the reality of a world gone awry. Perhaps then one might be able to coax them out. Its an article on pop culture; you want to read it fine, you don't want to fine, read another article.